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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Cljaji CopijrtQfjt^o 

sheifiiil7-£ 4 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SERMONS 



UPON 



FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE 



TOGETHER WITH 



^o?& f omilettcae 



BY 

JAMES M. HOPPIN 

PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF ART IN YALE UNIVERSITY 



'0 yap Kapwbs rod <purbs iv 10 1891 

Tracy) dyadojavvrj. — Eph. v. 9. /%&$**) 

/ 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY 

Publishers 

V , • 



THE LIBRAMY 
Or C OWQE Mt 

WASHINGTON 






Copyright, 1891, 
By Dodd, Mead, and Co. 



All rights reserved. 



2Entoersttg $ress : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



TO 



The Rev. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D., 

Asa token of sincere respect this volume is inscribed 
by the A uthor. 



PREFACE. 



THE prospect is not exhilarating to him who 
puts forth a volume of sermons. Nobody 
reads sermons. A few copies sent to one's friends 
are sacredly preserved with uncut leaves. They 
disappear in the limbo of dead things. But 
this, though taken for granted, is not quite true 
of published sermons like those of Frederick W. 
Robertson and Phillips Brooks. Few volumes of 
an earnest sort are more read than these. And 
does any one read books that have nothing in 
them? Sermons must take their chance with es- 
says, poems, histories, scientific works, and all 
other forms of literature. Yet it has been denied 
by critics that sermons deserve a place in litera- 
ture at all; that their object is to move men to 
immediate action, and they have no relation to 
past or future, but only to the present. Having 
done their work they are, like spent shot, worth- 
less. The feeling that produced them has passed 
away and cannot be repeated. But if music, 
which is feeling, can still awaken feeling, and 



vi Preface. 

speech, which is thought, can still arouse thought, 
and motives which move the will can be brought 
to bear again and again on the mind to impel it 
to act, then sermons are not spent forces, but they 
gather up and conserve spiritual power for use. 
The very beginnings of the German language and 
literature were in the translations and homilies 
which Charlemagne caused to be made by the 
Church for the people. The sermons of the great 
English divines such as Wycliff, Latimer, Taylor, 
South, Hall, Robertson, Newman, and Liddon, if 
they were expunged from English literature, would 
cause an irreparable loss. Sermons occupy, it 
may be a small, but a high place in the house of 
literature, like the chapel through whose windows 
a celestial light shines. Sermons, even the hum- 
blest of them, speak to the ever-recurring wants 
and hopes of man, and to that which is divine in 
him. They have in them a breath of eternal life. 
Every true preacher has a new intuition of re- 
ligion and Christianity. A sermon which is fit to 
be heard is fit to be read. The lightning may 
not strike in the same place, but from the same 
cloud may come forth electric power. A sincere 
word of God honestly spoken is never lost, and 
does not return entirely void to Him who sent it. 

By way of introduction, I would speak briefly of 
a beloved teacher who was a representative of the 



Preface. vii 

best Christian philosophy of Germany, of which 
Schieiermacher was the originator, though drawn 
'laps more distantly from the older " Theologia 
rmanica," — a theology that approaches truth 
from the right side, from the side of God, one 
might say, apprehending divine things in the way 
in which they can alone be apprehended, not pri- 
marily through the understanding, which is a sub- 
ordinate factor, but through the spiritual capac: 
by the higher reason and discernment there are in 
faith, hope, and love; the theology of Saint John 
and Saint Paul, in which the freedom of the hu- 
man will — a truth of priceless value and express- 
one of the highest prerogatives in man — is 
not, after all. the fundamental axiom of theology 
but rather the freedom of God's lov :11 is this ; 

in which theory there is a large idea of God that 
is not based on the limitations of the human mind, 
or the conception, as it were, of a child, but which 
begins in God and ends in God, and whose lan- 
guage is, " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, 
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord ; 
for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so 
are mv ways higher than vour ways, and mv 
thoughts than your though: 

Though sometimes forgetful of this divine phi- 

and carried away by pride of opinion. I 

nevertheless obtained rest in this spiritual or divine 



viii Preface. 

conception of Christianity, so that I have not been 
very seriously troubled by the changing phases of 
theological strife, the apparent antagonisms of rea- 
son and faith, the conflict between science and 
revelation, or " the discovery of the uniform laws 
of phenomena as disproving the supernatural facts 
of revelation," the progress of the higher criticism 
in its relation to inspiration, the bold yet believing 
speculations of the " new theology " following the 
track of Maurice and Robertson, the fresh redac- 
tion of the books of Scripture, nor the subtle 
speculations of modern materialistic philosophy; 
for I seem to have gained a foothold in spiritual 
truth firmer and farther in than these controversies 
reach. My obligations to Neander as a teacher, 
early begun, cannot be sufficiently acknowledged. 
It was in the last years of his life I attended his 
lectures, and was admitted to the more intimate 
home-circle of friends in which he was wont to 
meet his youthful disciples in a spirit of loving- 
familiarity. He brought his pupils into a very 
close sympathy with himself, — into the true bond 
of Christian love. He gave them freely the re- 
sults of his profoundest thinking. There was 
something, too, in the subjective character and 
richness of German thought, as contrasted with 
much of the barren metaphysics of the English 
inductive method, that attracted me. Since those 



Preface. ix 

-.vhich b::h he l:: 5:hleierma:her plared :p:r. 
feeling and life ir. Ihrishar. phii:s:phy. — that :he 
Christian is he who has the spirit of Chris;. All 
truth '.va.s centred in the divine person :f Christ 
Fr:m hint a rev; life emanated and "/as ::mmani- 
:a:ed to men. n:t springing fr:m. human rea.so.n 
but fr:m the' Spiri: :f Christ.' — a supernatural 
power working in humanity through faith 
Christ, not miraculously but naturally, as life 
-v:rks in the physical universe, anu acctruing :; 

mystery and yet truth :f this spiritual life in and 
thrrugh Christ, surpassing hnt'vledge ?..s all that 
is divine dies, prverfully impressed me and it 
-eemed t: re the best existent expressim ::' that 
Jihannean :he:l:gy in whirr, the highest tin: ugh: 
and truest love which there are in Christianity 
might find room. 

Upon Neander, is i prepared instrument, the 
mind of Germany slowly revolved from almost 
utter negation into spiritual Christianity. He left 
his impress upon the thought not only of Germ 
but England and America, by introducing his phi- 
losophy, not antagonistically, but by ^>n, 
and through a deeper interpretation of the divine 
will in the history and facts of human 



x Preface. 

ness. His was a philosophy of humanity as 
moulded through the ages under the silent shap- 
ing influences of the divine spirit. His own per- 
sonal history was an epitome of the real history 
of the Christian church. Brought out of Juda- 
ism through Platonism he emerged into the clear 
light of spiritual Christianity, made more rich as 
well as more humble by his profound experience. 
His philosophy was essentially of the school of 
Plato, and, as to that, of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and 
Schelling, — the ideal philosophy of a self-evidenc- 
ing intuition or consciousness of truth dwelling in 
the " eternal idea," the pure reason, which in these 
philosophers, and especially in Kant, whose phi- 
losophy had so deep an ethical basis, came so near 
to the teachings of the New Testament, but which, 
in Neander, was transformed into and came to be 
identical with the real, the divine, and the divinely 
practical, by the power of faith in the Son and in 
the Spirit. He himself lived in the region of ideas, 
and in the contemplation of the love of God, and 
he was a very child in the wisdom of this world ; 
yet his rare sagacity in divine things w r as so pene- 
trating that, while unconscious of it, he became a 
guide and light to myriads of other seekers after 
truth. 

To the few sermons that follow, intended not to 
provoke criticism but rather to provoke to good 



Preface. xi 

works and faith, hope, and love, I have added, by 
way of appendix, under the title of u Horae Homi- 
leticae," some short articles, first published in the 
44 Homiletic Review" during the years 1886 and 
1887, and which are familiar answers to questions 
sent by young preachers ; and this might be re- 
garded by students as forming a supplement to a 
work entitled "Homiletics" published by me in 
1881. 



CONTEXTS 



Page 

I. The Energy of Faith 3 

II. The Enlightening Quality of Faith . 23 

III. Faith's Increase 43 

IV. Faith's Lesson . . 61 

V. Christian Hope . 79 

VI. The Childlike Spirit 95 

VII. A Song of Freedom 117 

VIII. The Fold of Christ 133 

IX. Love of an Unseen Sayiour 155 



Hor.-e Homiletic.e: 1 






Sfje <£nergp of f aitfj. 



SERMONS. 



THE ENERGY OF FAITH. 

But Jesus answered them, My Father ivorketh hitherto, 
and I work. — John v. 17. 



T 



HE most energetic thing in the world is faith. 
Coming from God it partakes of him. In 
contradiction to the Oriental idea that God exists 
in eternal calm, insensible to feeling and above 
the need of action, the words of the text — won- 
derful even as spoken by Christ, because they 
cast light into the depths of the divine nature — 
reveal the unresting activity of God, that the 
" Father worketh hitherto," or, literally, " even 
until now," and that there is a constant outflow 
of divine energy. The impulse which made the 
worlds did not exhaust creative energy. 

On independent grounds science reaffirms the 
truth that there is in nature a force which, call it 
what you will, is ceaselessly active in evolving new 
results, in producing new forms of being, never 



Sermons. 



repeating itself and working toward a perfect end. 
I quote some words of a modern scientist: — 

" When one has become, by a long study of nature, 
in some sense intimate. with creation, it is impossible not 
to recognize in it the immediate action of thought, and 
even to specialize the intellectual faculties it reveals. It 
speaks of an infinite power of combination and analysis, 
of reminiscence and prophecy, of that which has been in 
eternal harmony with that which is to be ; and while we 
stand in reverence before the grandeur of the creative 
conception as a whole, there breaks from it such light- 
ness of fancy, such richness of invention, such variety 
and vividness of colour, that we lose our grasp of its 
completeness in wonder at its details, and our sense of 
its unity is clouded by its marvellous fertility. There 
may seem to be an irreverence in this characterizing 
the creative thought by epithets which we derive from 
the exercise of our own mental faculties ; but it is never- 
theless true that the nearer we come to nature, the 
more does it seem to us that all our intellectual endow- 
ments are merely the echo of the Almighty mind, and 
that the eternal archetypes of all manifestations of 
thought in man are found in the creation, of which he 
is the crowning work." 

When we consider another feature of the divine 
activity, its universality, this appears as wonderful 
as its unresting character. Although God cannot 
be regarded as omnipresent in the sense of filling 
the universe with his presence, yet his spirit works 



The Energy of Faith. 



with forceful energy in every part, as if that were 
the only part where the Divine Power is active. 
There is no conceivable point of space where the 
living energy of God is not felt. But when we 
leave the natural world and come to the spiritual, 
the truth of the unresting and universal activity of 
God in the creation of new minds, that (whatever 
may be said of bodies) are not evolved by physi- 
cal forces from material forms before existing, but 
are immaterial, original, and spiritual; when we 
know 7 that these spirits are created and sustained 
by divine energy ; when we think that upon these 
new minds are brought to bear influences which 
flow ceaselessly from God as ruler of a kingdom 
of spirit and sustainer of a divine life, — this truth, 
though harder to conceive, is more worthy of 
study. To renew a soul lying in the death of a 
sensual nature, and fit it to shine in the light of 
God's holy presence, what were the calling up out 
of chaos of a thousand material worlds to that ! 
How the loving energies of God are concentrated 
upon that soul, — that chaos of spiritual being, — 
and how constant must be the personal care and 
thoughtful action of God, to bring this new-born 
and still imperfect soul, through the way of its 
freedom, being wrought upon by spiritual forces 
that are in accord with its nature and its peculiari- 
ties of personal experience, into final perfection ! 



Sermons. 



Every such work has a varied richness of its own, 
and bears, like a work of art, the stamp of unity 
and originality. " Wondrous in working" must be 
the mind that is bringing by invisible but power- 
ful methods, by the numberless subduing and shap- 
ing strokes of divine skill, this profound, unformed, 
and disorganized spiritual universe groaning and 
travailing together in pain while waiting for its 
redemption, into a new creation. 

When we come to view the methods of the 
divine activity, while, of course, these are incom- 
prehensible to us, yet we infer that God's activity 
is directed by infinite intelligence toward a pur- 
pose of goodness, and that it is upon a plan of 
absolute reason which sees the end from the be- 
ginning. Yet while God works thoughtfully, and 
in accordance with the laws of reason, we may 
suppose that he does not work laboriously; for 
the divine nature has no fatigue as a man has, no 
loss or waste of power, even as it is expressed in 
the words of an old French hymn, — 

" En peu d'heure 
Dieu labore," — 

or, God works swiftly in no conceivable time. 
His work is not labour, which implies a fall, or a 
loss of original power; and there is doubtless a 
deep truth after all (when not carried to an ex- 
treme) in the Oriental idea of a central calm in 



The Energy of Faith, 



the nature of God ; a windless and waveless ocean 
of peace, which is the true Nirvana, that is not 
annihilation but the perfection of conscious blessed 
life. Thus Christ said, in the controversy with 
the Jews about the Sabbath, that in God the 
deepest rest is not excluded by the highest activ- 
ity. If this were not so, where would be the 
believer's hope of final rest from his toils in the 
bosom of God's eternal peace? Yet we should 
not carry this idea so far as to make God's activity 
to spring simply from the inherent necessity of 
His nature, that He must work simply because He 
is God, and not to spring from His will. There is 
an idea in this language — " My Father w r orketh 
hitherto and I work" — of the energetic putting 
forth of will-power; and just as any mind, made 
on the pattern of God's mind, w r orks voluntarily 
for a good end, so does God. God works ; Christ, 
who is the manifestation of the Father, works, — 
therefore we respect the worker. Christianity ex- 
alts work as a reflection of the activity of God. 
Work is divine. Whatever can be called a " work," 
which is an act of pure energy, is honourable. 
Setting aside even the end of the work, that may 
be good or bad, noble or selfish, we are attracted 
by a production of human energy, just as we are 
awed yet delighted before one of the works of 
the ancients which, like the original hills, time 



8 Sermons. 



has hardly touched. We are delighted because, 
though stupendous in material bulk, the work is 
an expression of spiritual force ; it belongs to 
the spiritual and free part of man in opposition 
to the material, and to material obstacles, and 
is above the worth of the work itself. A man 
who has done a genuine work — who has built a 
house, painted a picture, constructed an argument, 
established an honest business, laid, or helped to 
lay, a railroad, reclaimed a tract of waste land — 
deserves honour; for he has asserted his worth as 
one who effects results ; he has subdued nature 
by a spiritual force; he has shown a spark of 
that energy, that fiery particle, which is in and 
of God. Christianity recognizes the freedom of 
man to act, and the necessity of work; and al- 
though the work of the mind is, in some respects, 
nobler, as well as more difficult, than the work of 
the hands, yet there are few kinds of work that 
do not demand the co-operation of mind; and it 
is an unchristian sentiment, as well as one opposed 
to political science, and one which is showing itself 
in bitter conflicts between classes in society, like 
those representing labour and capital, that causes 
any good work, whether of the body or mind, to 
be held in disesteem. The deification of the in- 
tellectual, and the consequent degradation of the 
bodily nature, are both of them wrong; for the 



The Energy of Faith. 



world of spirit should come down into the world 
of sense to exalt and spiritualize it; and in like 
manner, on the other hand, mind can achieve no 
great work except on the basis of a sound body. 
There are some men who are not born to work 
in the world of pure intellect, who cannot live on 
books, but who are sent into the world to deal 
with the facts of nature, to fight with physical 
forces, to quarry the mines, to level the hills, to 
bridge the rivers, to till the earth, to fight the 
world's battles, and to do the world's business. 
The things of physical nature are also the expres- 
sion of the creative love of God. God dwells in 
nature. There must be this material activity in 
any form of civilization before the immaterial cre- 
ation can be reared upon it; or, to express it more 
correctly, the two must go together. The scholar 
should not hold in contempt the practical man, 
nor the practical man the scholar; but every man, 
thoroughly educated and developed in a perfect 
manhood, should, as far as possible, unite the two 
characters, even as in God the passive and active 
qualities, the contemplative and practical, are 
united in the highest measure. Christianity leaves 
no part unenergized. The love which seeks God 
springs from a divinely energized will. Work is 
the fruit of faith. Faith is the seed of a deified 
nature, of a new life in all the powers, that brings 



i o Sermons. 



them into healthful action; and when this awaken- 
ing of the whole nature is accomplished, the end of 
the activity, like that of Christ, is good. The central 
motive of our Lord's human activity he declared to 
be the love of the Father, obedience to the will of 
the Father who sent him into the world to do an 
appointed work. He confessed himself to be so 
filled with that will that he would not call his 
work his own, but the Father's, who sent him. 
" The Father who dwelleth in me, He doeth the 
works ; " and Christ made also another statement 
that we receive in silent faith : " Verily, verily, I 
say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works 
that I do, shall he do also ; and greater works 
than these shall he do, because I go unto my 
Father." He who has been energized by faith, by 
that new spirit of life in Christ, could achieve 
Christ's spiritual w T orks, his deeds of love ; and 
every work which springs from this divine germ, 
whether it be great or small, must be Christlike. 
In their human brokenness such works are " good 
works," because they have their life-principle in 
Him who ever works that which is good; so that, 
not only outward works of benevolence, doing 
good to other men, but every act of love, every 
act of faith, every conquest of pride, temptation, 
passion, selfishness, hidden in one's own heart, is 
beautiful, because it springs from the love of God 



The Energy of Faith. 1 1 

that is in the innermost depths of the soul. These 
are the trees planted along the banks of the water 
of the River of Life, that blossom, scent the air, 
and bear all manner of fruit at all seasons, for the 
delight of the meek, and for the good pleasure 
of God. In some strange way in our Protestant 
theology the doctrine of " good works," of these 
genuine works of faith, which we find strewed 
through the Bible in their own right places and 
relations as plantings of God's hand, has somehow 
lost its glory and been obscured. Not that Prot- 
estant Christians do not abound in good works ; 
but they do not recognize their divine beauty as 
fruits of the spirit, n^r share their joy and delight, 
nor even perceive their absolute necessity, but 
throw contempt upon them, cover them up, and 
hardly suffer them to hold their place among the 
essential doctrines of Christianity. Yet there is 
a genuine Christian doctrine of " good works," as 
there is a doctrine of faith, and there is a noble 
Christian idea of work, that is derived from the 
Divine nature and example. 

There may be drawn from this subject two or 
three lessons of a practical character. 

I. To whatever work, in the good providence of 
God, we are called, and which itself is of a genuine 
nature, whether it be secular or religious, to that 
work, we should give, according to the measure of 



1 2 Sermons, 



strength allotted us, our real and undivided ener- 
gies. Every one, in the first place, ought to try to 
do for his life-work that for which he is adapted, 
that which he can do best, and that which he loves 
to do best, — for then his heart will be in it, and 
he will be more likely to be a good workman. If 
it be practicable, we should thus give ourselves to 
some work in which we feel sympathetic interest 
and for which we are fitted. This is the work we 
can do. This is in the genial current of the na- 
ture. The poet Shelley could not master math- 
ematics, but he could write poetry. De Ravignan, 
the orator of Notre Dame, could not make poetry, 
but he could preach with a masculine vigour. 
Having settled upon an occupation, whatever it 
be, if honest, we should give to it our best powers ; 
for this is the life-work to which we are appointed, 
the way in which we are to manifest our character 
on this field of action, the world. One of the 
most brilliant of modern writers, to whom, if to 
any man, we are apt to ascribe genius that pro- 
duces its results spontaneously and without labour, 
said of himself: " Whatever I have tried to do in 
life, I have tried with all my heart to do well. 
What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted 
myself to completely. Never to put one hand to 
anything on which I could throw my whole self, 
and never to affect depreciation of my work, what- 



The Energy of Faith. 1 3 

ever it was, I find now to have been my golden 
rule." Another great man has said, " What I 
have done has been done by days' works." But it 
is in the words of Christ that we find the divine 
expression of this principle of thoroughness, which 
is not only a golden rule of worldly success, but 
also a principle of religious duty: " He that is 
faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in 
much." Thus God works. He who rules the uni- 
verse and decides the complex and eternal desti- 
nies of spirits, who holds in His hand the abysses 
of being and space and turns about the worlds 
without noise, looks to the minutest details. 
11 Great in great things, greatest in least things " 
was Augustine's motto respecting God ; but there 
are really no great or small works with Him ; and 
whatever He does, is done with the whole mind 
and whole heart of God, and there are no imper- 
fect divine works. In this, the human worker 
may learn to resemble God. This soundness in 
working should indeed be a religious principle. 
The principle of probity in work, if one drives a 
nail to do it thoroughly, should become a uni- 
versal principle of action, should run through a 
man's life and all his works, even as the tide, when 
it comes in, not only fills the great gulfs and bays, 
but runs up into even' creek and inlet, and pene- 
trates and glorifies the whole land. Yet let me not 



1 4 Sermons. 



be understood as saying that this faithfulness in 
work should degenerate into a superficial, feverish, 
and vulgar activity, without intervals of repose, as 
Nature has. If men, if American workers, in all 
departments of life, should cultivate the passive 
virtues, and let nature and God sometimes work 
for them and in them by silence and contem- 
plation, they would have deeper and sweeter 
natures ; and in their apparent inaction the pro- 
found springs of thought and life, exhausted 
by constant drain upon them, would slowly fill 
up ; as great men have had their Patmos, their 
Arabia, their Wartburg Castle, and have kept 
silent and nursed their thought in solitude, and 
have then come forth to do works that moved 
the world. Sometimes it is true " their strength 
is to sit still." 

2. In all our work there should be found the 
higher spiritual motive and love as its impelling 
and inly sustaining source of activity, the faith 
that works by love. Are we not the sons of God? 
A monkish writer has said, " That which gives 
the only value to human actions is the will of God 
in them." They spring from the inner life. This 
spiritual purpose should strike through the whole 
constitution and activities of the being, even to 
the most insignificant act, doing all to the glory 
of God. The eternal life enters into it. If we 



The Energy of Faith. 1 5 

live humbly and lovingly in the divine will, as 
Christ lived, who did the works of his Father, and 
said that his works were not his but his Father's 
which sent him, it is not of great consequence 
what a man does, since the spirit in which he 
does his work glorifies it: " As a man thinketh in 
his heart so is he." It is possible to serve God 
in any condition, and more than this, the love of 
God is consistent with the love of earthly things so 
far as they are innocent. But man, with limited 
powers, can, as a general rule, do but one thing, 
and let him do that divinely. Although joyfully 
recognizing the truth that there is a peculiar work 
for God that every Christian has to do, a labour 
in His vineyard and spiritual kingdom; and a 
mighty field of work it is to seek and save that 
which is lost, to make this sinful world, or that 
part of it which lies under the power of evil, 
better, happier, freer, and more divine, — a man's 
work truly; x yet the Christian need not divorce his 
common from his religious life. God puts us 
where he would have us be. Our life anywhere 
is His. God, if we would but see it, is in our 
common life, — His strength, glory and joy. Let 
us not dare to call anything common or unclean 
which He approves of or permits to be. Christ 

1 That thou therein do a knightly work. — Luther s transla- 
tion of 1 Tim. i. 18. 



1 6 Sermons. 



proved his divinity in nothing more than in this, 
that he made to stand out in such fulness of light 
the truth " that all that is finite only needs the con- 
secration of the infinite in order to be divine. He 
saw the universe in its true light." : He filled it 
with the Father's presence, activity, and love. Re- 
ligion is the divine element in the ordinary things 
of life and in all things. It should not be nar- 
rowed down into an ecclesiastical form or theory 
separate from everything else, but should hallow 
all and work in all like the leaven. Sweep away 
selfish luxury and effeminacy and bring into our 
life a broader and higher idea of the love of God 
and man, and the .land would be filled with simpler, 
manlier, and merrier men. Let the Christian word 
" service," come to the front! Let there be noth- 
ing in us that remains disunited from and opposed 
to God, but all — all be assimilated and harmon- 
ized to His purer service ! It was Mr. Gladstone, 
I think, who said that " the belief of men, nowa- 
days, had very little to do with their life, but that 
this belief was rather a matter of education and 
opinion." If this be so it bespeaks a deep insin- 
cerity, a spiritual corruption, and all the orthodoxy 
in the world cannot save it. One's belief should 
permeate and renew his life, in its every act and 
production, as the rain of heaven sinks into the 
1 Schleiermacher. 



The Energy of Faith. i 



earth and moistens the roots of all things that 
spring up and grow : all will be the plants of a 
divine faith. A man need not seek any other 
vocation than the one he finds himself in, if a 
lawful one, in which to serve God. He need not 
build an altar to duty outside of the circle of his 
usual life, of his home, his daily pursuits, his aims, 
affections, walks, and studies. An artist may be a 
priest at the altar; so may a coal-heaver. A me- 
chanic shows his Christianity better by thoroughly 
honest and faithful work than by the most beau- 
tiful prayers in the prayer-meeting; or, at all 
events, unfaithfulness in the line of ordinary 
daily work would be a greater proof of unchris- 
tian character than the omission of beautiful pray- 
ers. Having once given himself to God, all that 
one does, and all that emanates from the man, will 
bear the character of this spiritual consecration. 

3. We should strive to do our work in this world 
well, in order to increase our working capacity, 
to develop our powers, to train ourselves for 
something higher to come, that we may be better 
fitted to serve Him who created us, each of us, for 
some good end. To fulfil the desire for self-com- 
pleteness, to raise ourselves to the highest worth 
of being, to realize our own perfection, this indeed 
were motive enough to press us on in all good 

endeavour. Perfection is the aim of art. But what 

2 



1 8 Sermons. 



were this, to the motive of rendering back to God, 
with usury, the mind that he has given us, and 
that He has redeemed by the sufferings of Christ 
from all evil; of presenting ourselves before Him, 
with our powers increased by activity, and saying: 
" Lord, Thou who ownest me altogether, use me 
in Thy heavenly service, as thou hast used me, 
even me, in my earthly life." If not thoughtful 
to work with this loving, prayerful, and immediate 
reference to God's praise, will, and judgment, rather 
than to human praise, our labour may become a 
selfish thing. We may labour for the meat that 
perisheth ; and our proudest works, our most bril- 
liant intellectual achievements, like " wood, hay, 
stubble," may be so thoroughly selfish that they 
shall not stand the test of the fire of the divine 
judgment, searching every man's work of what 
sort it is. As Christ came into the world to do 
genuine work, " not to be ministered unto but to 
minister," let every man, unworthy though he be, 
yet with cheerful hope, feel the responsibility of 
life, feel its joy and fear, and that he shall be 
judged by his works, " whether they be good, or 
whether they be evil." So our Lord told us, who 
also said, " Without Me, ye can do nothing." 
Let every man ask, Lord, what wilt Thou have 
me to do? Guide me by Thy good spirit into my 
true life-work ! Cleanse me from sin and self- 



The Energy of Faith. 19 

seeking, that I may work for Thee ! Accept me as 
an humble labourer and servant, in the name, and 
by the transforming faith of Thy son Jesus Christ, 
who is also my example in holy living and obedi- 
ence ! Enable me to devote my energies joyfully 
unto Thee ! In the midst of the hardest labours 
life is worth living if the will of God is accom- 
plished in us, and in what we are and do ; and 
this life, there is no doubt of it, is an endless 
though noble struggle, a trial of the new-found 
spiritual strength in putting down antagonistic 
forces, and hastening the kingdom of good. 
Charles Kin^slev said that " the best reward a 
man had in doing good work, is in having more 
work given him to do; " and I suppose he meant 
by this, that by doing something well a man 
proves himself able to do something better, and 
thus his energies seek room to develop, and in- 
stead of the few things, he finds himself ruler 
over many things, with his capacities enlarged for 
higher service, and thus he enters into the infinite 
work and joy of his Lord. Hope is the impelling 
power of Christian consciousness. The Christian 
looks forward not back. He forgets those things 
that are behind, their shortcomings and fragmen- 
tary fulfilments ; he does not live in the imperfect 
Past to groan and lament over it, but in the active 



20 Sermons. 



Present and the still more life-full and perfect 
Future. The ages to come are his, and the eter- 
nities of being open to him, like triumphal arches 
one beyond another, their glorious hopes and 
possibilities. 



II. 

€f)c Enlightening OSualitp of jfaitf), 



II 



THE ENLIGHTENING QUALITY OF 

FAITH. 

Jesus heard that they had cast hi?n out; ajtd when he 
had 'found him he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the 
Son of God? He a?iswered and said, Who is he, Lord, that 
I might believe on him ? And Jesus said unto hi?n, Thou 
hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And 
he said, Lord, I believe. A)id he worshipped him. — John 
ix. 35-38. 

IN this account of the blind man who was re- 
stored to sight we cannot but notice how 
rapidly his faith grew as soon as he came into 
personal contact with Christ. His faith, at first, 
was most crude though recognizing the truth to 
be in Jesus ; soon however it was strong enough 
to acknowledge Jesus to be a good man ; and yet, 
so genuine was it, so true was its source in the 
heart, that it was able, when the Saviour was fairly 
presented to him, to see in him " the Son of God," 
the manifestation of the Almighty Father, the 
divine object of confidence and source of spiritual 
life and light. 

We cannot but observe also how marked is the 
contrast of this sincere and fast-growing faith of 



24 Sermons. 



a man of the people, and probably an illiterate 
man, whose eyes Christ had opened, with the dark- 
ness of mind of the educated Pharisees, who, vain 
of their knowledge, closed their eyes to the light, 
and through unbelief were smitten with blindness. 
While he was enlightened from the pure fount of 
light they were driven further and further away 
into the shadows of night. While he was gifted 
with penetration to see the Messiah, the anointed 
to save, they, who sat in Moses' seat to watch for 
his coming, did not perceive the signs of his pres- 
ence, though the light shone around them, and 
though common minds, the ignorant, the blind, 
the leper, the publican, the vilest even, rejoiced in 
its rays. Declaring that the light was in them, 
and that they were the enlightened, the holy, the 
shrines of truth to whom men must come for light, 
they remained stricken with hopeless blindness. 
It was the light shining in darkness and the dark- 
ness comprehending it not. 

I would speak to you upon the enlightening 
quality of faith as we see it set forth in the history 
of the blind man, brought to sight by Christ, and 
in all the instances where faith exerts its proper 
influence upon mind. 

Faith is an enlightening as well as energizing 
principle; because it springs from the source of 
light, from an honest reception of divine truth, 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith. 25 

thus kindling in the intellectual centre a light from 
the mind's enlightener, which dispels its natural 
darkness, awakes all the powers and produces a 
clarifying influence on the nature. 

We see something of this enlightening power 
of faith in lower manifestations of the same vivi- 
fying principle. When Robert Stephenson, the 
English engineer, finished building the Tubular 
Bridge, the first of its kind, across the Menai 
Strait, at the public commemoration of this event 
he made a short address to the people, in the 
course of which he said that " he took little credit 
to himself for the work ; for he felt that it was 
trust in a power out of himself that had carried 
him through the enterprise, that enabled him to 
overcome the immense difficulties of the undertak- 
ing, and that sometimes, he thought, inspired him 
with new thoughts and expedients when he was 
baffled and at his wit's end." Can we doubt that 
this assertion of the great mechanic had truth in 
it, even in respect of material things revealing an 
intuition of physical laws? What is called genius 
is a mind that God has made, and that is fired 
with a true and sometimes new thought that God 
has put in it. In the same way faith has done 
many wonderful works. It has won battles ; it 
has written books ; it has built buildings ; it has 
sung poems; it has painted pictures; it has made 



26 Sermons. 



scientific discoveries. Faith in an idea has often 
filled the mind with an enthusiasm and a practical 
wisdom to carry out and establish that idea which 
has generated power sufficient to revolutionize 
states, We see this mingling of the enthusiast 
and the practical man in great historic characters, 
such, for instance, as Cromwell, and also, though 
a more phenomenal character, Mohammed, whose 
gigantic power is felt now in three continents 
coping with Christianity, and renewing itself, so 
that myriads are looking forward to a new Mes- 
siah, a "Mahdi," who, in the words of Mohammed, 
" will fill the world with justice as it is now filled 
with iniquity." 

Faith in man or the teacher of any truth gives 
a penetration into his spirit and a comprehension 
of his ideas that nothing else can give. He who 
puts faith, for example, in a man like Coleridge, 
who believes in him and loves him, will come 
sooner than another would do at the heart of his 
teaching and the spirit of his philosophy; and it 
is profitable as well as delightful to talk with a 
hero-worshipper, an ardent believer in a great 
man, especially one about whom, like Coleridge, 
there is a difference of opinion; for the zealous 
disciple has, it is most likely, entered more sym- 
pathetically than other men into the genius of him 
upon whom the enthusiasm of his soul has fas- 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith. 27 

tened, and studied him with keener insight; and, 
in like manner, one might say of men of science, 
like Darwin, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer, " Let 
me talk with those who believe in these teachers 
and heartily appreciate them and whatever of 
truth there be in them, in order to come at their 
opinions and understand them. ,, Is it not so of 
the teacher Christ? 

Xot only does faith become an enlightening 
principle through firing the mind and arousing 
its powers to keener penetration, but also by puri- 
fying the moral nature, bringing its passionate im- 
pulses into controul, and holding in check every 
disturbing element. Mental darkness springs from 
moral weakness. It comes from want of a decided 
purpose. But when the will is roused to the at- 
tainment of some object of faith, then there is new 
light diffused through the mind, and the man 
seems to emerge from the cloudland of indolent 
fancies into the day of practical action. He is a 
dreamer no longer. He has earnestness and sin- 
gleness of purpose. He is no more the plaything 
of passion, hunting shadows, and slave of his illu- 
sions ; but he is master of himself, open-eyed, a 
fighter who sees his foes straight before him, who 
is not terrified by them, but who goes right on 
with an intelligent and growing boldness to the 
winning of his object however difficult. It has 



28 Sermons. 



often been noticed in regard to young men that 
there is a Hamlet-like period in their lives, — a 
halting and indecisive time, when the mind is 
unsatisfied and full of bitterness real or feigned; 
when the will is undecided because of this self- 
consciousness, or " conscience that makes cowards 
of us all." This irresoluteness must be overcome, 
and the man must advance to " a calmer state of 
insight where the reason shall have some mastery 
of the desires," before he will begin to work with 
a will, and with cheerful, steady patience, and 
before anything great may be hoped of him. 

But it must be said that the enlightening power 
of faith is commensurate with the object of faith 
and does not go beyond the light contained in the 
object. If the object be small, its light is small 
and partial, perhaps false. If it be gold, the wor- 
shipper will have the light that comes from gold, — 
a golden light that fascinates and leads on thou- 
sands, as it led the fierce Spaniards to the con- 
quest of a new world. If it be reputation, the 
seeker may obtain the brilliant light fame brings; 
if it be scholarly or scientific knowledge, he will 
have the higher and purer, though still earthly 
light that knowledge yields. But if the object of 
faith be the " Son of God," who is " the Light of 
the world," this man shall have light given him to 
see spiritual things ; he shall be full of light, and 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith. 29 

to him shall be revealed a new world of truth, — 
a world which, though it lies in and about us, is 
hid from the natural mind. " Spiritual things are 
spiritually discerned.'' For this the eye must be 
opened, or made to see. He who created light, 
and made also the eye, can alone adjust the 
one to the other, and can give the perceptive 
power to the organ, waking the dead mechanism 
to a living sense of sight and the glories and de- 
lights of vision. Dante when he enters the 
shadowy Inferno represents himself as having his 
eye opened by inward submission to the Truth, 
and hence he gets " infinitely beyond the wretched 
factions of Guelphs and Ghibellines of his time, 
and sees the roots of their sin and misery. The 
flaming realities of Eternity stand visible on every 
side of him, and teach him the straight way, and 
give him power to measure the dimensions of 
Popes and Caesars, and estimate them by a true 
standard. And his earthly life, too, with all its 
sadness, has thereby become bright and clear and 
unspeakably precious." He sees earth and hell 
and heaven. 

But more definitely, this higher faith in "the 
Son of God," to which the scriptural narrative of 
the blind man specially directs us, reveals to us, — 

I. The new world of ourselves. Faith gives the 
knowledge of ourselves. It teaches us to estimate 



30 Sermons. 



human nature; to have right measures for men, 
society, character, success, life, death, and the 
future. 

To see and know the physical world is a won- 
derful prerogative and privilege of mind; but a 
man may have read Nature with the eye of sci- 
ence, he may have had a thorough scientific cul- 
ture, and yet he may know nothing of himself; 
and neither will his metaphysics — the reverse of 
the physical in thought — teach him self-knowl- 
edge. He may be still in the realm of the lower 
or of natural phenomena, while the originating 
forces are behind these, and are spiritual. 

We should assuredly strive for knowledge, for 
all knowledge, since the most outward physical 
fact is related to the most inward spiritual truth ; 
and we should not be satisfied w T ith a narrow edu- 
cation, a partial culture (there is a great deal of 
nonsense spoken and written against culture), but 
should aim for the largest acquirements, and a 
range of vision which is able to take in the rela- 
tions of all sciences. " There is no reason," says 
a vigorous writer, " why one who has a profound 
religious experience should therefore remain igno- 
rant of the fact that the inclination of the earth's 
axis to the plane of its orbit is the cause of the 
change of the seasons." But let us know that in 
this knowledge if we are not opposed to we are 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith. 31 

on the outside of truth still, and on the outside of 
ourselves, of the moral and spiritual world that 
stretches within and beyond. How little do men 
know of the depth and richness, the divine in- 
dwelling richness, and alas, the chaotic confusion 
often, of the inner world of their spirit, though 
made in the ima^e of the divine ! 

The maxim of heathen antiquity " know thy- 
self," while it expressed the highest point which 
heathen philosophy touched, was a confession of 
the consciousness of the loss of self-knowledge. 
We have, it is true, a faculty of knowledge, be it 
called reason, or conscience, by which we may 
apprehend truth, and especially that truth which 
relates to moral being. This is " the light that is 
in us." It is a sense divinely fitted to receive 
moral and spiritual truth, and it was made for so 
doing. "The end of all knowledge," Milton wrote, 
to know God aright, and out of that knowl- 
edge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like 
Him." Yet this knowing faculty, this intuitive 
apprehension, this natural eye, is clouded and 
darkened by the sensual mind and life, until it 
may be said to be blinded. The light that is in 
us becomes darkness, but even then the original 
organ of light is not destroyed ; as the blind man 
in the miracle retained the organ of sight, he had 
the perfect eye, though it was closed, useless, filled 



32 Sermons, 



with darkness, until opened by Christ. Then for 
the first time that man saw his real self and his 
need of a spiritual helper, even as Christ spoke to 
this awakened consciousness of need in the ques- 
tion, " Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" 
Christ, who speaks to the moral perceptions and 
sensibilities, who opens the blind eye, could bring 
him to this self-knowledge. He reveals us to our- 
selves. He reveals to us our spiritual and divine 
nature that can be ministered to by the " Son of 
God." He lights up our inner being and causes 
us to see its character, so that if we have hereto- 
fore cherished false views of ourselves and our 
goodness, they give way before the clear light of 
his spirit. His spirit searches the deep things of 
the spirit, its capacities for good and evil. Christ's 
law is laid upon spirit. " My kingdom is within 
you." His law of obedience is in the spiritual 
affection more than in " the form of godliness." 
We may keep the decalogue, yet if the love of 
God be absent, break every law. We talk of the 
duty of temperance, a great duty; but a man 
may be a temperate man and total abstainer, 
and yet he may at the same time nourish those 
intemperate wishes, inordinate affections, envious 
feelings, lustings after applause and power, and 
those covetous desires that show the unchastened 
and unspiritual mind, and this truth the spirit of 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith. 33 

Christ searches out and brings to light. One 
may not go to his neighbour's house and steal, he 
may not swindle his neighbour out of his prop- 
erty, but he may at the same time take from, and 
profoundly wrong his neighbour by unjust and un- 
kind words, and by more unkind thoughts. He 
may wantonly and wickedly break the law of love, 
which infraction of the highest law is a condemn- 
ing sin, as well as the sin of dishonesty. In his 
treatment of others one may even manifest ex- 
treme outward courtesy and a lively show of per- 
sonal friendship, and, after all, love only himself, 
and live only for himself, and nurses, in his inmost 
heart a contempt for his fellow-men, the spirit of 
invincible pride toward God and man ; and this, 
Christ, when he pours light into the soul, reveals 
to a man and makes him humble. 

Christ required of the young man who desired 
to become his disciple to do but one act of honest 
self-denial, and a touch developed the secret love 
of " this present evil world " and the unchanged 
and unspiritual state of his mind ; he turned from 
following Christ " for he had great possessions." 
How different the case of St. Francis of Assisi, in 
the thirteenth century, who, a wealthy and popular 
young man, as he heard the call of Christ " For- 
sake all that thou hast and follow me," obeyed the 
call literally, stripped off his silken garments, gave 

3 



34 Sermons. 



up his large property and devoted himself to pov- 
erty and preaching the Word, so that when we hear 
afterwards of his seeing deeply into spiritual things, 
glories, and joys, and of having visions of the Lord 
Christ, we should not be too hasty to put it all down 
to superstition and a heated fancy ! This inward 
revelation of Christ makes known to us that some- 
times we are not what we even seem to be. It 
slays our conceit. It brings down high thoughts. 
It reveals selfishness. It is a work of levelling be- 
fore that of building ; and yet to carry out this, 
the work of self-humiliation must be thoroughly 
done, and it is thoroughly done in man whenever 
Christ's spirit reveals him to himself. That spirit 
makes him sorrowfully but sincerely acknowledge 
the evil that is in him, that he is a sinful man, that 
he does not do even his duty from the love of 
God, that by the spiritual law of Christ he is con- 
demned, and that to inherit eternal life he must be 
entirely " renewed in the spirit of his mind." 

2. Faith in the Son of God opens to the mind, 

blinded by its sin, the new way of purity and life. 

# 

It reveals the love of God as well as the enmity 
and sin of man. " No man knoweth the Father 
but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal 
him." Having shown us the human unrighteous- 
ness, Christ then shows the way of restoration in 
the righteousness of God. 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith. 35 

How different was this teacher from those 
whose genius is keen to detect the diseases of 
human nature, who have the satirical and critical 
power developed, like many reformers of the pres- 
ent day, but who are able to minister no medicine 
to minds diseased, no drug potent enough to bring 
to them new life, — men who are skilful in using 
the dissecting knife, but incapable of checking the 
progress of the malady ! There was once, and 
not long ago, a man in Europe whose name will 
occur to you, whose long life, like that of Teiresias* 
the seer, stretched over the last half of one cen- 
tury and almost over the first half of another, and 
who filled that whole period with the splendour of 
his intellectual light, who was the wisest man in 
human wisdom and subtlest in discernment of the 
age, or of almost any age, — the compendium of 
a world ; a man of unsurpassed breadth of intel- 
lect, who could write with impassive mind a poem 
that would make others weep : — 

11 He took the suffering human race. 

He read each wound, each weakness clear, 
He laid his hand upon the place 

And said, 4 Thou ailest here and here.' " 

Deep was his knowledge of Nature, and pro- 
foundly did he read man, but it was not from 
Nature that he could draw life and healing for 
the wounded spirit; and this priest of Nature, 



36 Sermons. 



as he himself confessed by his witty irony and 
apathetic indifference, passed by on the other 
side. But the " teacher sent from God " does 
not abandon the soul to whom he has shown 
its deadly wound. There is no devilish laugh 
heard over the fall of the pure. He does not 
mock human misery. He does not leave the 
sufferer in his sorrow. He sought the man who 
was excommunicated by men and cast out of the 
synagogue and pronounced morally incurable, and 
healed him. He never fails in tenderest sympathy 
in the time of need, when all human aid forsakes 
and the soul is left alone in its sorrow. He not 
only knows men infinitely better than Shakspeare 
or Goethe or Browning, or the most subtle poetic 
genius, but he loves them. He reveals to the dark 
and anguished spirit the love of God. He reveals 
the Father, the Father willing to forgive, desiring 
that none should perish in spiritual darkness, suf- 
fering for the loss of any of His children and 
yearning over them with infinite compassion, — 
even the inmost nature of God, His love, as a 
shoreless sea flowing around and embracing all his 
creatures, higher than their thought and deeper 
than their sin. 

" In this was manifested the love of God towards 
us, because that God sent his only begotten Son 
into the world that we might live through Him." 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith. 37 

Christ reveals the love of God by his sacrifice ; 
and what was that sacrifice? The Son of God 
was crucified between two thieves, and heaven was 
darkened and the veil of the temple was rent, 
which was the outer, visible sacrifice ; but the inner, 
invisible and spiritual sacrifice of divine love, can 
it be known? We should believe on him because 
he reveals to us not only what our hearts confirm 
of the sin of man and the love of God, but what 
our hearts tell us love will do. Love is sacrifice. 
Where was there ever love where there was not 
sacrifice for the object of love? Wherever the 
altar of love is built there the flame of sacrifice 
ascends. From mother-heart down, the world is 
full of love's vicarious quality, and love is always 
giving its life. God has made this law of sacrifice 
the law of life, that out of death springs life, that 
11 except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die it abideth alone, for if it die it bringeth forth 
much fruit." He has mysteriously submitted Him- 
self to this law of sacrifice. " Christ hath once 
suffered for sins, just for unjust, that he might 
bring us to God," that, giving his life for us freely, 
we might receive this spirit of life and love into 
ourselves and live the eternal life. Faith does not 
create this sacrifice but reveals it. It is only 
opening the eye to see what God has done for us, 
to see God and how infinite He is in His love. 



38 Sermons. 



The eye is opened, it receives the light of that 
heavenly truth and acts upon it. 

The man who believes, to him eternal life is 
opened, and he sees his divine inheritance, and 
the bright and lofty things God means for him in 
His loving will. He wins the great vision of God. 
How many hearts in every age of the world since 
Christ died have given their testimony to this, 
which has become what has been called the Chris- 
tian consciousness of the world ! Upon the re- 
ception of Christ as " the Son of God," by faith, 
there comes into the mind a sense of reconciliation, 
of divine peace flowing from real union with God, 
— the " sweetness and light" not of culture but of 
a holy mind. 

Christ throws light upon the deepest, most aw- 
ful, most tender, most joyful, most spiritual rela- 
tions of God to the soul. He makes plain as a 
shaft of light the way of the soul's return to God, 
so that no one need miss it and thus enter into 
God's life. By the way of the heart, by the way 
of faith, by the way of love, by confessing truly 
from the heart " Lord I believe," — in this way, 
your soul and mine may find eternal life, and may 
find it in this life; for the vital principle of Chris- 
tian life, above dogmas, is living in Christ by faith 
and love; Christ not only reveals a new life but 
he is that life, that spirit in us. The essential 



The Enlightening Quality of Faith, 39 

reality of Christ's salvation consists in our appro- 
priation of his spirit, in realizing his spiritual life, 
in having his character, in becoming ourselves a 
part and portion of his divine goodness. 

Christ's human life was exceptional in its per- 
fection, but not exceptional in its spirit, and we 
too may share it. We may have " the same mind 
that was in Christ." We may come up into that 
human divine life which he lived, and which he 
still lives, being made one with Him in all things, 
in the spirit. Wherever in religion or the theology 
of Christianity we have doubt and trouble, here 
is the essence of Christianity, — to believe that 
the divine becomes human and the human divine 
in Christ, and thus believing, to live a life in the 
spirit of Christ. If then we be risen with Christ, 
let us seek those things that are above and that 
belong to the higher spiritual life, the faith, hope, 
and love of the gospel; its gladness, purity, and 
peace ; its courageous and childlike spirit ; its 
lofty aim ; its willing self-sacrifice ; its sweet con- 
tentment; its loving brotherhood; its meekness, 
greatness, goodness, and light. 

And if there be a soul that feels no desire for 
this u light of life," lying in the darkness of this 
world and of a sensual life, and sinking every day 
deeper into the death of selfishness, Thou com- 
passionate One, who didst open the blind man's 



4-0 Sermons. 



eyes and pour on his dark mind the cheering 
light, let this one feel thy healing touch, and hear 
thy re-creating voice, saying, " Awake, thou that 
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and I will give 
thee light ! " 



III. 

tfaitty$ ^nctrea^e. 



III. 

FAITH'S INCREASE. 

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall 
have abundance ; but from him that hath not shall be taken 
away even that which he hath. — Matt. xxv. 29. 

" HPHAT which he hath," — what meaning do 
-*- you attach to these words? If you are 
like myself, you have read them a hundred times 
when they have seemed weighty like the words of 
our Lord, but without conveying a clear idea, or 
an idea that has been clearly analyzed. They 
were spoken at the conclusion of the parable of 
the talents, but as they were also uttered at other 
times, and in other relations, they seem to have 
been a condensed expression of truth of wide ap- 
plication, so that the words (if we can come at 
their meaning) form one of those deep sayings of 
Christ which run under life, and contain a founda- 
tion principle of God's kingdom. 

In Matt. xiii. 12 the same words stand in con- 
nection, not with the parable of the talents, but 
with the parable of the sower, and have an appli- 
cation to the method of teaching by parables, or 



44 Sermons. 



to the revealing and concealing properties of par- 
able-teaching, namely, that " he who hath," or he 
who understands with the heart as well as hears 
with the ear, has more of divine truth given him, 
and sees deeper than other men into the parable, 
or dark saying, while " he who hath not," or he in 
whom there is no spark of spiritual desire, nor 
meetness to receive the word, has taken away from 
him all the benefits of heavenly instruction, and 
even " that which he hath;" and, like a lightning 
flash which dazzles the eye, the darkness is darker 
than before ; even as the scribes and Pharisees 
were blinded by the lightning of Christ's word 
and wandered in outer darkness, while many an 
humble man welcomed it as the manifestation 
of God's wisdom and love, and as the word of 
eternal life to his soul. 

In the parable of the talents with which the text 
is connected, the salient feature, and that on which 
the parable turns, is " the slothful servant," since 
he is the one to whom the words apply " but from 
him that hath not shall be taken away even that 
which he hath." That is to say, that " he that 
hath not " is he who holds his talent as if he had 
it not, not having it because not using it. He who 
went and hid his talent in the earth did not have 
it ; for in order to have a good as a possession we 
must make that use of it which its nature requires, 



Fa it lis I ?i crease. 45 

else it vanishes like an unsubstantial sceptre from 
our grasp : as a rich but unlearned man, may have 
his library filled with good books containing all 
the learning of ages, yet he cannot be called their 
owner so truly as the poor scholar who arranges 
them on the shelves and knows something of their 
contents. 

The slothful servant, whose portrait our Lord 
paints in a few strokes, was the portrait of a pecu- 
liar but not altogether uncommon type of man. 
He is not only spoken of as a u slothful " but as a 
"wicked" or false servant. His receiving of his 
one talent was but an apparent receiving after all, 
and his bitter words, " Lo, there thou hast that is 
thine," showed that he had not really accepted the 
gift, that he had only seemed to receive it, and 
that he never truly had it. It was a dead gift. 
He never possessed it through his despising and 
neglecting it. He scorned it. He typifies the 
cold egoism of those persons who do not in their 
heart of hearts accept the Christ. God's gift to 
humanity. — " Herein is love, not that we loved 
God, t it He loved us. and sent His son to 

be the propitiation for our sin ; " and who are so 
bound up in self-love that they do not feel the 
need of the love of God. There was a heartless 
indifference about this man, an Iago-like spirit 
devoid of sincerity and gratitude, as well as a 



46 Serntons. 



slavish fear of his Lord, that stamps him as one still 
unreceptive of the divine gift, and who was inly 
compelled to step out of the place which he failed 
to improve, and where his heart never was, and to 
surrender his gift to another, perhaps a man who 
had five or ten talents, yet who was humble in 
spirit, and who showed a genuine willingness to 
receive and use the gift for his Lord's glory. 

It is perfectly right, however, to take the words 
of the text out of their special connection with 
the parable of the talents, because our Lord him- 
self does the same, though not ever losing sight 
of the parable's teaching, which goes deep into 
life and its success or failure, and to look at the 
more comprehensive and profound sense of the 
aphorism. 

The parables of Christ may be unlocked by 
the golden key of " the kingdom of God; " and 
they were spoken to set forth to minds that truly 
comprehend them, the deepest laws of that king- 
dom ; so that in this saying of Christ, impressively 
uttered at different periods of his life, we may 
perceive a law of his spiritual kingdom, namely, 
that the real reception in the soul, by faith, of 
the heavenly gift, is the secret of spiritual life and 
of spiritual increase. 

The words " for unto every one that hath " may 
signify the man of faith, or he who is receptive of 



Faiths Increase. 47 

what is divinely given him, and who has thus ob- 
tained some actual possession of spiritual things ; 
since faith is a divine endowment of the soul, 
whereby it knows and acquires something of God. 

Here then is the law of spiritual acquirement 
and growth. From the nature of faith there is in 
it a principle of increase in all the possessions of 
the soul, or in spiritual character, good, happiness, 
and perfection. There is a growth in grace and 
in the knowledge of God, but a beginning of all 
this is gained in the act of faith. 

Whatever implies growth, power, development 
of any kind, in the natural and intellectual as well 
as the spiritual world, must have something posi- 
tive to start from. The physical universe, in its 
order and perfection, was developed from the 
creation of matter in a germinal form ; and from 
this elementary principle of matter, call it what 
you will, come all the forms of organized material 
existence; and in like manner, the great systems 
of science, which constitute the world's wisdom, 
depend upon and spring from the simple faculty 
of knowledge implanted in man, together with the 
material of truth for this knowing capacity and 
desire to work upon; so the production of the 
works of art, even the greatest, find their neces- 
sary basis in the intuitive sense of beauty in the 
human mind. 



48 Sermons. 



In like manner in the world's business, there 
must be a nucleus, a starting point of capital, 
however attained and however small, even for ma- 
terial wealth to roll up and accumulate. We read 
the story of Stephen Girard's selling his box of 
matches in the streets of Philadelphia, and that 
this was the beginning of his immense property, 
which story crudely illustrates our meaning, for it 
gave the young Girard a standing-place in the 
money market. 

In spiritual things this beginning, this starting 
point, this crystallizing focus out of the chaos, this 
germinating principle of life and growth, is the 
possession of faith, it may be as a grain of mus- 
tard seed. " To every one that hath," to every 
one that hath this divine gift, this real possession, 
more of all things that are spiritual and divine 
shall be given, and " he- shall have abundance," 
in fact, limitless possession, for faith is eternal life 
in germ; it is potential of things divine; it is "the 
substance" (substantial possession) "of things 
hoped for;" and the heavenly treasure (heaven 
itself), with its unspeakable glories and joys, is not 
really some addition to, but the more perfect 
development of, what is, in this life, already the 
believer's own ; for in the love of Christ is the 
capacity and reality of heaven. 

Let us hear this old gospel of faith, and leaving 



Faittis Increase. 49 

other ways of human perfectibility, be they ethi- 
cal or philosophical, like modern Comtism, out of 
sight for a moment, let us listen to the divine 
voice which sounds through the ages from Abra- 
ham's time to our own, repeated by the apostle 
Paul, re-echoed by every man who ever entered, 
though fighting and faint, into the kingdom of God, 
" By faith are ye saved, and that not of yourselves, it 
is the gift of God," and " Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ and thou shalt be saved." Faith grasps 
this great salvation. Faith is the consciousness 
of the divine ; faith possesses God, and thus com- 
prehends the possibility and promise of spiritual 
life, and of every holy and heavenly possession. 

I will try to give a few reasons for this. It is 
seen first, from the fact of union, or the fact that 
faith, looking at its divine side, is an energizing 
from above of the dead and sinful soul, which ena- 
bles it to rise from its sleep of sin and to join itself 
upon God, the spring of spiritual life, and thus to 
come unto His unity which embraces all. It is the 
Spirit's uniting act, or gift of power, which engrafts 
the branch, the wild and corrupt branch, upon the 
Vine, Christ Jesus, whereby the spiritual life is 
henceforth drawn from divine sources, and grows 
by a living principle of union with Christ, who is 
the life ; it lives because Christ lives in it, and 
imparts to it its principle of spiritual growth. 

4 



50 Sermons. 



It is seen, secondly, from the fact of reception, 
or, because faith, looking at it from its human 
side, is, peculiarly and above all, the receptive 
principle, or the human desire and want which is 
felt to have and to be filled with what God can 
give it; and thus the faith itself is planted in the 
human desire to have and to know more of God. 
It is receptive of God and his spiritual gifts. 
Faith thus planted in a rich soil, and itself being 
made willing or ready to receive, and capable of 
receiving all it can possess of God, must there- 
fore increase, because that which it grows upon, 
or draws from, is infinite. 

It is seen, thirdly, from the fact of perfection, or 
because faith aims at the standard of divine per- 
fection in character and life. As it is a divine 
gift it takes its standard from the giver, rather 
than the receiver; it exchanges a human for a 
divine ideal; it is satisfied with nothing under the 
heavenly ideal. " Be ye perfect even as I am per- 
fect." The more a soul longs for the perfection 
of God, the more God opens to it the riches of 
his perfect wisdom, goodness, and love ; for, to the 
soul that gives itself to God, to it God gives him- 
self in his fulness; so that we should not stint 
ourselves by human views, but should enter by 
faith into the immeasurable largeness of the giver, 
and being " rooted and grounded in love, know 



Faith 's Increase. 51 

something of the length and breadth, the height 
and depth, and comprehend the love of Christ that 
passeth knowledge, that we may be filled w T ith all 
the fulness of God." How the apostle Peter in his 
setting forth of the marvellous climax of the Chris- 
tian life, seems to climb up into the atmosphere of 
heavenly things, beginning as he does down at the 
foot of the mountain of faith, reaching one great 
terrace after another that lift themselves like altar- 
steps, sloping upward and ending in the divine love, 
as if nothing were above this, and the infinite blue 
were bended over all. " Add to your faith virtue ; 
and to virtue knowledge ; and to knowledge temper- 
ance ; and to temperance patience ; and to patience 
godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; 
and to brotherly kindness charity," for he could go 
no higher; but the beginning of all this divine and 
infinite series of development in the perfect life, 
was faith. Literally rendered the passage is, " See 
that your faith develops itself in virtue, and virtue 
develops itself in knowledge,'' and so on ; each at- 
tainment being organically involved in the other 
preceding attainments (for what is evolved must 
first be involved), but all contained, as it were, in 
the faith-cell, — a theory of evolution scripturally 
and spiritually true, for the infinite germ of all god- 
likeness, progress, and perfection, is implanted in 
the soul that once unites itself to Christ by faith ! 



52 Sermons. 



And, lastly, this is seen by action, or because 
faith, like the faithful servant in the parable, is 
itself an active principle which is ever diligently 
putting out to usury the talents it receives ; thus 
gaining other talents, and by using what it started 
with well, is constantly rolling up capital. Faith 
comprehends the economies of a holy and rich 
life. The benevolent man, whose life is faith in 
action, grows still more capable of benevolent 
activity, and by giving finds it easy to give. He 
uses the love God has put in his heart, and, as his 
power of loving grows, he discovers a hundred 
ways and opportunities of doing good that ordi- 
nary men know nothing of. His work grows on 
his hands. The work of Immanuel Wichern, of 
Hamburg, the humble founder of the " Rough 
House " reformatory school of Germany, is an 
example of this law of increase. This plan, con- 
ceived by a poor man in self-denying faith, for 
reclaiming the abandoned classes of the great city 
of Hamburg, on the simple Christian principle of 
trusting and loving them, very much upon the 
plan of the late Mr. Charles Brace's " Five Points 
Mission," only more radical and extensive, and 
very obscure at first, a grain of mustard seed, has 
grown into an imperial benevolence extending not 
only over Germany but shooting its branches over 
all Europe, and, one might say, the world. In a 



Faith's Increase. 53 

still more spiritual conception of faith, he who 
uses the gift of prayer, which is faith in its purest 
exercise, who daily prays to his Father who is in 
secret, grows in intimate communion with God, and 
becomes a prince in the spiritual realm, setting 
in movement, by a breath, supernatural forces, and 
whose whole life is an act of prayer or praise. 

Spiritual growth is both passive and active ; it 
receives and it uses what it receives. This co- 
operation of divine and human energies, where it 
exists, results in advancement all along the line of 
holy activity and growth, extending into the future 
and unseen. The poet Tennyson, in his poem on 
" Wages," asks for Virtue " Give her the glory of 
going on and not to die." This is another way of 
putting the Biblical truth, that those who have 
wrought well here, shall be the possessors of many 
talents and rulers over many cities. It implies that 
work done here bears a relation to more pure 
and glorious work hereafter, and that the powers 
of the soul will find their full scope in eternity. 
Thus in all situations in this life, however narrow 
and hard, however hemmed in by affliction and 
trouble, faith will find the way to make progress, 
to enlarge its sphere of activity, to grow con- 
stantly in grace and in the knowledge of God, as 
the noblest forest tree in the world, the Italian 
pine, springs strong and vigorous, towering into 



54 Sermons. 



heaven with its massive chambers of dark foliage, 
from the very crevices of the rock. 

But we have thus far looked only at the bright 
side of the Lord's words, while there is, also, an- 
other side as correspondingly dark, which is the 
antithesis of faith, and of its joyful advance in spir- 
itual life, hope, and all good ; if the sunshine 
sleeps in it, so does the thunder. 

Faith, and faith only, unites the soul to God in 
an ever-advancing life in Him, while, in like man- 
ner, alas, unbelief separates the soul from God, 
leading to the wasting of the powers of life. " But 
from him that hath not shall be taken away even 
that which he hath." As in God, and in that 
joyous divine atmosphere of life and hope which 
is in Him, all good things blossom and flourish, so 
away from God all good things wither and die. 
As in the nature of faith there is a principle of 
living increase, so in the nature of unbelief, which 
is a state of mind unreceptive of God and His gift, 
there is the working of a law of constant diminu- 
tion in the soul's original possessions. The native 
powers of the intellect can expand to their utmost 
only in the air of truth, love, and obedience. The 
agitating influence of evil passions and error dis- 
turbs the healthy working of the mental faculties ; 
and the older a man grows, if a bad man, the 
more rapidly his moral nature deteriorates, and 



Faittis Increase. 55 



pulls down with it his intellectual nature. How 
sudden and rapid after they had reached a certain 
point, has been the fall of the great bad men of his- 
tory ! The emperor Tiberius was not an ordinary 
man in sagacity, he was in fact one of the ablest 
of the emperors ; but he writes to the Roman 
Senate from the island of Capreae, the home of 
his incredible debaucheries, that "what to write 
or not to write, may all the gods and goddesses 
torment me more than I am daily suffering, if I 
do know ; " as if he already felt the inevitable cer- 
tainty and swiftness of his plunge into moral 
destruction. 

After the first unsatisfying and embittering ex- 
periences of evil there is not enough left in evil to 
attract, or to impel, the whole mind, as it is im- 
pelled by a great motive, or, by a great ideal, 
like the love of God; and the mind turns in 
upon itself; the will spends itself in efforts at self- 
impulsion; the reasoning powers hang suspended 
over some impotent conclusion or sophism, that 
proves nothing, and that brings no result worthy 
of the intellect. 

Above all, the spiritual powers and gifts which 
belong to man's higher nature, and which are 
given as the continual dew of heavenly grace to the 
soul from the hand of the Father, the inborn de- 
sires reaching out to Him, the messages of higher 



56 Sermons. 



life and hope that come to every one, the blessed 
kingdom of God dwelling with men, Christ's divine 
love for humanity and his blood shed for all, the 
living influences of the Spirit immanent and ever- 
working in every spirit — these, to the man not 
receiving and using them by faith, obedience, and 
love, are quenched in his dulling heart, as the 
lights go out one by one in a great cathedral ded- 
icated to God, and where His praises have been 
sung, and it becomes a cold and gloomy void. 
One sees sometimes such totally desecrated 
churches in Europe. The gifts are " taken away " 
from him not valuing nor receiving them, and the 
unprofitable servant wastes and consumes his di- 
vine birthright. 

So the last thought which I draw from this 
theme is necessarily a sad one, and full of ad- 
monition especially to those who have not yet 
received Christ simply and joyfully by faith, as 
he offers himself in the gospel. The conditions 
of God are small, and in one sense, easy, but they 
are needful conditions of the new life ; they are so 
in the nature of things. The mind is made 
that it craves perfection. All thinkers admit that 
man cannot be explained without God. Human 
nature finds its ideal, its completion, in God. 
Faith is the yearning after this perfection in the 
divine image and conception. The lack of the 



Faiths Increase. 57 

possession of faith, or total unbelief, quenches 
these higher aspirations, bars the door to the all- 
free gifts of God, takes away the native magnifi- 
cent possessions of the mind, and is man's essential 
poverty. " Cast ye the unprofitable servant into 
outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnash- 
ing of teeth." 



IV. 
f ait*)'** %t$$tm. 



IV. 

FAITH'S LESSON. 

For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith 
to be content. — Phil. iv. 1 1, part of verse. 

IN what way the apostle learned the rare les- 
son of contentment, every man who is seeking 
for a free mind (which is the source and end of 
true philosophy) would wish to know. 

He did not seem to have learned it from his 
theological instructors in Jerusalem (so queenly a 
science as theology is) for he was tormented by a 
fierce spirit while sitting at the feet of Gamaliel, 
starting up at times to hale innocent men and 
women to prison because they differed with him 
in matters of belief: " And Saul, yet breathing 
out threatenings and slaughter against the dis- 
ciples of the Lord, went unto the chief priest, and 
desired of him letters unto Damascus, to the syn- 
agogues, that if he found any of this way, whether 
they were men or women, he might bring them 
bound unto Jerusalem ; " and it was upon this 
journey to Damascus, in obedience to his theolog- 
ical zeal, that the gentleness of Christ fell upon 
him and took him captive. 



62 Sermons. 



Neither did he appear to have caught the spirit 
of contentment from his classical teachers, in 
Tarsus, from whom he acquired Greek culture, 
and some excellent things that he made good use 
of, but from whom he gained also a knowledge of 
the multiplicity of questions, vexing the mind, 
that the thinkers of antiquity had started but left 
unsettled. The apostle had somehow won this 
wisdom from a higher source, since few, if any, 
before him, in the ancient days, gave such testi- 
mony to a real contentment. 

If we should ask in earnest concerning the way 
in which this lesson was acquired by a man of like 
passions with ourselves and partaking of the same 
changeful life, one filled with profound changes 
(for he wrote these words while prisoner in Nero's 
implacable hands awaiting the probable fatal issue 
of his trial), we must look at the ground of dis- 
content in the human mind ; of that disquietude 
which never has seemed more aggravated than 
when, in these late Christian days, the spirit of 
pessimism is pervading thought, and it is declared 
that life is evil, that this life in will and idea is the 
worst possible, that happiness, in any form, has 
not been and never will be obtained, either by the 
individual man or the world ; and this is made 
an open philosophy of life. But it may be af- 
firmed — and none but the disciples of the pessi- 



Faith's Lesson. 63 

mistic philosophy would deny it — that the mind 
was meant for better things than to live in discon- 
tent ending in despair. It was made for enjoy- 
ing itself, like other creatures of God, in the free 
exercise of its powers in harmony with the loving 
divine will. " The soul," in the oft-quoted words 
of St. Augustine, " was made for God, and it al- 
ways will be restless until it returns to Him." 
The soul turns ever to God to find its rest. Even 
in suffering it finds hope in God. Man, regarded 
from a philosophic point of view, is imperfect 
without God. His is a dependent child-spirit that 
cannot become independent of God. God enters 
into its inmost parts and relations ; He knows 
thoroughly the work of His hands ; He formed 
the human mind upon the image of the divine ; 
He gave it its principles and ideals in His own 
nature; He sustains its energies of will and action; 
He conferred the powers of thought that reach to 
Him, and the affections that find their capacity 
of loving met only in Him ; He made man to 
" hunger and thirst after righteousness " even 
when unrighteous, so that nothing can fully satisfy 
and complete him lower than the knowledge, 
righteousness, and love of God. 

But the mind, created in its powers and affec- 
tions to live and move and have its being in God, 
to delight ever in Him, may, as free, by a simple 



64 Sermons. 



act of disobedience put itself in antagonism to the 
Lord of its life. Man may deny God and cast off 
the recognition of Him and of His right in him. 
He may break out of His unity of love. " Sin," 
the apostle says, " is the transgression of the law; " 
the inner law of righteousness written in the mind 
and made consciously part of its child-nature. 
Sin thus becomes a divisive element. It breaks 
the happy union with God, and plants a discordant 
principle in the heart; and here have we not a 
glimpse of the profound source of human discon- 
tent, that it is not conditioned upon outward states 
of being, but is spiritual, and lies in the soul's 
alienation from its true life? If thus inner and 
spiritual, may we not see the way back to peace 
by this hidden pathway? — that when the broken 
bond is reunited and the spirit is brought into 
willing obedience of the living God, then from 
the nature of the soul, it finds life and peace ; and 
a peace springing from such a source, wrought 
in the soul and proceeding from the readjustment 
of its profoundest nature with the divine law of 
its nature, no outer thing can touch it, no change 
of condition affect it. 

A serious mistake (arising from wrong teaching) 
is made by those who suppose that the soul comes 
into a state of unfreedom, or of unhappy bondage, 
by submitting itself to the law of God, so that re- 



Faiths Lesson. 65 



ligion is an unnatural thing; for, on the contrary, 
this is the first moment of its real freedom when it 
is released from the tyranny of things out of the 
soul, of time and sense, and becomes, what it was 
made to be, joyfully one with the highest law of 
its being, in union with that spirit in whom it finds 
the perfection of its powers. Love has unity. The 
want of it creates division. In fact, the difficulty 
of the age is its setting up of God's creature, hu- 
manity, in God's place, who is the sun, the centre, 
so that the mind loses its own centre, its support, 
its divine life, and droops and dies like a plant cut 
up from its root. Speaking of the phase of the 
irreligion of the times, an English writer says : — 

" One of the causes which indisposes the mind to the 
perfect obedience of God may be described as the spirit 
of an intellectual selfishness, which makes man and not 
God the centre of the world of thought. Man is again 
to be, as of old with the Greek sophist, the measure of 
all things. God is but a point on the extreme circum- 
ference of his creature's thought. Nay more, in its more 
developed form this temper makes God Himself a pure 
creature of the thought of His creature, and by doing so 
it at length denies His real existence. But even where 
it stops very far short of this culminating wrong, it ac- 
customs men to see in religious truth the colourings or 
productions of the human mind so exclusively, as to eat 
out the very heart of true religious life. For men can 
no more worship that which we deem to be a creature 

5 



66 Sermons. 



of our own or of another man's mind, than we can 
knowingly worship the carved and painted workmanship 
of human hands." 

How true is this ! There is really but one truth ; 
God — going around phenomena; and all truths 
are but fragments of this truth. God, so rich in 
goodness, and in every perfection that man was 
made for and craves for his highest life, gives 
Himself freely to the mind that gives itself freely 
to Him; and, until a man has made an uncondi- 
tional surrender of himself to God, which is his 
reasonable (spiritual) service, he cannot have hap- 
piness in himself. " Acquaint now thyself with 
Him and be at peace. " " That in me ye might 
have peace," Christ said, through whom this spir- 
itual reconciliation is effected, and by whom the 
human and divine are made one, which is the 
mystery of faith. The apostle Paul wrote to 
the Ephesians, " for through Him we both have 
access by one spirit unto the Father ; " and here 
is doubtless the open secret of the apostle's con- 
tentment which nothing could disturb or over- 
throw. Centred in love, he could write such a 
divine chapter as the thirteenth chapter of the First 
Epistle to the Corinthians. By coming to know 
Christ he found the way of union with God, and 
received that gift of peace which enters into the 
peace of God. 



Faith's Lesson. 67 



It is, however, worthy of notice, that the apostle, 
in the text, speaks of his having learned this con- 
tentment, as if it were something of a personal 
acquisition, and that all Christians had not yet 
acquired it. " For I have learned, in whatsoever 
state I am, therewith to be content." 

While contentment is a spiritual gift, and comes 
through deliverance of the soul from the tyranny 
of sin, and its reconciliation with God, while this 
is its only foundation, yet it did not seem to 
have been at first entirely possessed even by the 
apostle; but he learned it; he underwent instruc- 
tion in Christ's school, in whose hands as a 
teacher he put himself, and who taught him, by 
every method, to come into this heavenly wisdom. 

u Contentment " by its etymology and in the orig- 
nal means that which is equivalent to " self-con- 
tained, " or the power to controul one's self, — that 
power which springs from the bringing under of 
the selfish nature, and which is taught in the 
school of Divine Love, — a hard master, some- 
times, we think, and the lesson of contentment is 
a difficult one to learn, as each of us knows. One 
of Charles Kingsley's books, which for a wonder 
has little else in it of worth, has this thought, that 
a man is not perfect until he is able to do what 
he does not want to do; or until he has got the 
mastery over himself so as to do this ; wherefore 



68 Sermons. 



it is not to be taken for granted, that all Chris- 
tians can make the apostolic declaration of having 
learned the lesson of contentment, or self-contain- 
ment; for if this were true, Christians would be 
happier people than they appear to be. 

How frequently it happens, that when one im- 
agines he has come to a free mind, and has 
yielded up all to God, and is depending on divine 
power for peace, he may be depending for happi- 
ness, after all, on things other than God, — upon 
his success in a lower object of life ; upon his 
completing some work; his winning some prize; 
perhaps, on his change of abode from one town, 
or continent, to another, or some agreeable out- 
ward surroundings and social relations; on human 
friendship and not on Christ's friendship; on 
human praise and not the praise of Him who is 
the true judge of actions, for the basis of peace 
must be divine ; else, were these objects removed, 
where is he? Is he self-centred? If he lose the 
good speeches of men and grow unpopular, if he 
be forced to meet the obscure struggles of pov- 
erty, if health breaks down, if domestic cares over- 
take him, if friends leave him, and if all that gives 
zest to life — all in the outward state that is happi- 
ness-bringing — be taken away, will he have peace, 
and be able to say, — 

" My mind to me a kingdom is ? " 



Faittis Lesson. 69 

If this lesson of contentment, therefore, in order 
to be learned, is to be learned by each man 
through his personal experience of spiritual things 
and the teaching of Christ, I would suggest one or 
two simple ways by which the believing soul may 
find out how to increase its contentment and to 
deepen the peace that springs from a higher 
source than the world. 

I would mention, first, the cultivation of a trust- 
ful spirit; of a habit of resting in all things, 
whether great or small, temporal or spiritual, on 
the will of God as something solid and abiding; 
and why should we not do this? 

•• We have but faith ; we cannot know, 
For knowledge is of things we see." 

Having yielded himself to God, having come into 
union with God in Christ, let one seek, by a con- 
stant habit of trusting God, to deepen the union, 
to be more and more "hid with Christ in God; 
and when the human will learns to come into har- 
mony with the divine, its restless longings grow 
still. As in the woods we follow down a stream 
that comes leaping from the hills, tormenting itself 
among roots and rocks, and fretting its way along 
in confined channels, growing more and more 
restless, and then we see how calm it suddenly be- 
comes at the moment when it touches the great 
river; and so, too, when a soul, emerging from 



jo Sermons. 



the narrow channel of a selfish life, meets the deep 
current of the divine will (the river of eternal 
righteousness), and blends with it, then something 
of a divine tranquillity enters life, and nothing can 
greatly disturb its contentment. The more of 
God in a life the more strength. Macaulay wrote 
of Milton, " Neither blindness, nor age, nor gout, 
nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political 
disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor 
neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and 
majestic patience." And is it not true, brethren, 
that many a humble Christian has shown this 
serenity, and has experienced, perhaps, deeper 
and sweeter revelations of the love of God in his 
soul, than Milton, although he has not had the 
heavenly visions of the poet, nor heard the angel 
quires? 

A Christian's contentment may, yet again, be 
cultivated, by his constant purpose to imitate the 
Master in his meek human life on earth, to grow 
more and more like Christ in spirit, and to come 
into his love, since it is being one with Christ in 
spirit that poises our life in divine love. 

The loving mind is happy; the humble spirit 
has peace. We have heard of the happiness of 
the unhappy, or of those who have nothing but 
God, but, having Him, have all. To bear the 
cross silently on, depending upon the crucified 



FaitJis Lesson. 71 

for strength to endure; to draw continually from 
his spirit, " looking unto Jesus, the author and fin- 
isher of our faith, who for the joy that was set 
before Him, endured the cross, despising the 
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the 
throne of God," — this is the way to nourish an 
inward peace amid the changes and trials of life ; 
and it is a great thing not only " to take up the 
cross," but also to know how " to follow Christ " 
with a humble, joyful, and loving mind. 

The believer would deepen and widen his con- 
tentment, I remark once more, by striving to re- 
press those vain lustings of the mind that are the 
kindlings of an undisciplined imagination and bar- 
ren thinking; and, on the other hand, by main- 
taining a cheerful activity in practical Christian 
work. A state of living that is hopeful, laborious, 
kindly to man and single-eyed to God, should take 
the place of an intellectual dreaminess out of 
which come monstrous births, fantastic and empty 
as clouds without rain; for the fruits of happiness 
spring from the faithful tilling of the field where 
God has put us, be it ever so lowly, be it in study, 
in business, or in day-labour, under the hottest sun 
or coldest blast. 

Contentment comes from genuinely loving God 
and man, and doing good to men or living in their 
lives; and, above all, from the consciousness that 



72 Sermons. 



God is our Father, and that we have God with 
us in this life, and that we do, ever, "walk with 
Him." 

The saints and patriarchs who, in the morning 
of the world, walked with God, and over whom, 
we have been taught, hung a divine light of tran- 
scendent glory and mystery, were, really, no 
nearer God than the humblest believer now is, 
who lives with Christ daily and serves Him with a 
whole heart. 

I would wish only to add that the apostle, in 
the words of this confession which he left for our 
encouragement, does not or would not evidently 
confine his meaning to the mere state of his outer 
life, which is not the real life, but he would extend 
it to the inner state. Thus, he would not refer 
solely to his poverty or abundance, sickness or 
health, his being in prison or being free, but also 
to his mind — its riches and wants, health and 
sickness. He was contented with the limitations of 
his own nature, intellectual and moral, where these 
limitations or imperfections did not involve what 
was sinful, though he thought himself a very poor 
saint; for, in these things which he could not 
controul he read the divine plan in his life, and 
learned the peculiar work God meant him to do. 
Thus, the apostle, or any other man who has true 
contentment, is led to give up an inordinate am- 



Faiths Lesson. 73 



bition which strives after things above his power ; 
and is not this peculiarly the sin of the American 
nature, never satisfied with possessing, grasping 
what is beyond it, — a source, it is true, normally 
or healthily developed, of individual and national 
greatness, — but a principle which, when grown 
to disproportion, is the root of morbid anxiety, 
unhappiness, pride, jealousy, self-conceit, and un- 
manly weakness. 

There is a generous unrest in youth, a grand 
discontent, ever pressing it on to higher things, 
which regards nothing as too high, which despises 
obstacles, and which is inspirited more than dis- 
couraged by difficult undertakings. This self-as- 
surance, this fiery courage, is given for a good 
purpose, — for the bold, great deeds of the world 
are done by young men. Beautiful, indeed, is this 
soul-daring; and yet high as is the aspiration of 
youth, Christian faith comes in early as an at- 
tempering power, as a calm voice from above, 
speaking truth to the soul, guiding its efforts by a 
higher wisdom and love, telling it where its real 
force lies, bidding it not be disheartened by fail- 
ure, softening its impetuous fire, touching with a 
firmer strength its ardent courage, revealing to it 
the eternal principles of right and duty, making 
it know what success is, making it know that, 
while Christ calls for all its energies, the highest 



74 Sermons. 



activities may coexist with a quiet and gentle 

spirit. 

" Oh, Lacedaemon's olden band, 
Thy flutes of silver sound 
Teach me, however firm my stand 

Upon life's battle-ground, — 
However resolute the blow 

I deal in pressing on, 
My inmost spirit should but know 
A quiet under-tone." 

On the eve of his forty-seventh birthday (the day 
before his death), Thomas Arnold of Rugby writes 
of the work he would like to do in the world, but 
adds: " Let me mind my own work above all, — 
to keep myself pure, zealous, believing, labouring 
to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be 
done by me rather than by another if God disap- 
proves of my doing it." Here was manifest the 
even-poised and apostolic spirit that had entered 
into the divine unity. Christ's blessed life, above 
all, teaches us patience in which dwells final vic- 
tory; unselfishness which delivers from a thousand 
torturing desires; contentment; steady persever- 
ance in good endeavour; the wish to do a little 
well, rather than fail in attempting things beyond 
its reach ; a constant love and an immortal aim. 

It bids the soul be cheerful, hopeful, loving, and 
brave; glad to serve anywhere; rejoicing ever- 
more; filled with the joy of a life given up to the 



Fait lis Lesson. 75 

Lord of its life, who gave Himself for us, and who 
says to all restless minds that are still secretly un- 
tamed, proud, and therefore without joy: " Come 
unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden 
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you 
and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 



V. 

Cftrtsttan ifopc. 



CHRISTIAN HOPE. 

Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul both sure 
and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the 
vail. — Heb. vi. 19. 

HOPE is one of the noblest of the natural in- 
stincts. It is, as the poets say, the sunshine 
of the mind. Like the old sun-dial of Saint Marks 
at Venice, it marks only the cloudless hours. It 
has a lifting power which raises and carries life 
on. The boy hopes to be a man, and you see, 
in his thoughtful moments, the dignity and energy 
of a man, so that you say, " He will be a credit 
to his family. He will conquer Silesia." The 
man looks through the years, bearing up under 
their burdens, to the honours and rest of old age. 
Old age, stript of all else, ought at least not to live 
on the past, as is often said, but to be waiting in 
joyful expectation of something better that is be- 
yond. There is this quality of hope in us which 
is the spring of our courage and of the capacity of 
recovery from disappointment and defeat, — Prince 
Eugene was always more terrible in defeat than 



8o Sermons. 



in victory. Hope, " the nerve of life," as Thack- 
eray calls hope, without which man would lose half 
his happiness and power, and power of growth, 
making him " a man of hope and forward-looking 
mind even to the last," is that which gives life its 
impetus; but which native quality, strong though 
it be, ends in human nature and what it can do 
and compass. It is, like human nature itself, a 
thing of earthly uncertainty whose grounds are 
ever shifting; while the hope which is spoken of 
in the New Testament, or that which may be 
called Christian hope — even if it use the beautiful 
natural instinct while transforming it into some- 
thing spiritual — is a more enduring principle, 
partaking of the eternal state of being. 

If we look at the reasons why Christian hope, 
as distinguished from the natural or instinctive 
quality, is likened to an anchor that enters into 
the veil and is sure and steadfast, the chief reason 
of it we will find to be that it is a hope which 
is fixed upon God and His truth, where alone is 
stability. God's being is that which " is," not that 
which " becomes." " God is, and He is the re- 
warder of them that diligently seek Him." Even 
the sinful nature may change until it partake of 
the character of God ; but no element of change 
enters into the being of God, since change in Him 
would imply that there is a necessity for change, 



Christian Hope, 81 

or that He is in some respect imperfect, whereas 
for God to be God He must be perfect; and thus 
in the very idea of God, and the qualities which 
constitute the divine nature, there is no room for 
change; for such a supposition destroys the per- 
fection of the divine idea, and implies a con- 
tradiction in itself. Nothing can add to or 
take from the perfect One in whom all fulness 
dwells; though let us fairly understand that God 
is not unchangeable in the sense that His na- 
ture is one of immovable hardness like a rock ; 
for His heart is touched by the most delicate 
emotions that the purest spirit is capable of feel- 
ing; but He is unchangeable in the immutability 
of those moral qualities which form His charac- 
ter and upon which the government of the world 
rests secure. It is not the unchangeableness of 
unintelligent and unfeeling things ; no, for the good 
man, true and tender-hearted, ruled by his better 
reason, who feels most but changes morally least, 
and who tends to be more and more fixed in the 
spirit of his mind in good, the most nearly re- 
sembles God of anything of which we have knowl- 
edge; but unlike the best human being, who has 
faults, God is ever the same in His essence, power, 
truth, wisdom, and love. Were He changeable in 
wisdom, He could not purpose for eternity, but 
His purposes lacking wisdom would clash with 

6 



82 Sermons. 



one another and there would be elemental and 
all-destroying strife ; and were He changeable in 
power, His wisest purposes could not be carried 
out, and He would be compelled to become un- 
true to His word. But His will once revealed 
knows no change, else there would be no sure 
basis for all that is to rest upon, or all that may 
be to proceed from ; and wherein or wherever, 
therefore, God has clearly revealed His will, we 
may know that it will be fulfilled. If we see the 
proofs of God's firmness in the unalterable opera- 
tions of His physical laws — a principle on which 
all science is founded — so we may believe that 
the blessed promises of God will come true, and 
that He who brings forth the spring violets from 
under the snows of winter, rejoices to bring out 
from the most rugged and unpropitious circum- 
stances the blossoming of every hidden seed of 
hope ; and the rugged circumstances form a factor 
in the divine plan. In God's wisdom misfortune 
is a blessing, and compels men to use their powers 
boldly, and to do things that they could not pos- 
sibly have done in prosperous times. And God 
does not desert a soul in misfortune. When we 
seem to be entirely hemmed in He makes a way of 
escape for the soul. In the drear immensity of 
the Arabian desert where nothing else grows you 
will find minute sand-flowers too small even for 



Christian Hope. 83 

fragrance, and yet that cheer the wanderer and 
say, " Up, heart, there is hope for thee ! " 

How little do we truly know or can imagine of 
God ! How we limit Him in our narrow theories ! 
How short are our conceptions of Him ! How 
small a part do we see of the orb of the divine 
nature, and of the all-comprehending plan of His 
goodness working silently in the depths of the 
unfathomable mystery in which He veils Himself, 
and His love to all the creatures He has made ! 

Another reason why Christian hope has in it 
the principle of stability is, because it has a source 
of strength in the perfect character of the spiritual 
work which Jesus Christ has done for and in the 
soul. Here we find the Christian element coming 
in. Christ is the eternal uncreated Word in whom 
the being, truth, and love of God are spoken, or 
manifested beyond the clearest expressions of God 
in nature or any creature; for the redemptive 
work of Christ springs from the divine will, or the 
working of divine love in the divine will, and 
therefore it is perfect and requires nothing added 
to it; or, as Milton said, " The Holy Spirit needs 
no supplement; " and the Holy Spirit is also 
called in the Scriptures " the spirit of Christ; " so 
that the work of Christ has a wonderful consist- 
ency, and, so to speak, eternal character. It is 
not a work that was begun when Jesus was born 



84 Sermons. 



in Bethlehem, but it bridges over from one eter- 
nity to another eternity. "Who verily was fore- 
ordained before the foundation of the world, but 
was manifested in these last times for you who by 
him do believe in God, that raised him from the 
dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and 
hope might be in God." The work of the Son of 
God was accomplished in the divine mind as 
something belonging to its nature of eternal love 
before man or sin came into existence — " Jesus 
Christ the same yesterday, to-day and forever." 
Christ is in God as His eternal Son who ever 
manifests His active power of love, and herein 
exists the energic redemptive principle of Chris- 
tianity. Whatever difficulties there are in the 
doctrine of Christ's sacrifice, they will vanish when 
we follow it up to its source in the love of God ; 
and its impossibilities (we sometimes say nothing 
is impossible to human love) become nothing if 
it sprang from the love of God, if " God so loved 
the world that he gave his only begotten Son " 
to die for its sins. But all the sacrifices of men 
and their efforts after goodness, the lives of heroes, 
sages, and saints, we feel could not make a perfect 
sacrifice for sin ; it would be weak and full of 
flaws; but we know that if the love of God under- 
took to make that sacrifice He could do it, and 
when that love " spared not his own Son " but 



Christian Hope. 85 

freely gave him up for us all, the clouds of mys- 
tery are dissipated and the light of heavenly hope 
breaks forth. 

Not only the divine, but even the human part 
of Christ's work, from His birth to His resurrection, 
gives no signs of failure or imperfection. Christ 
became true man that He might redeem man, and 
His human nature was that of one " made perfect 
through suffering," approaching the cross with 
slow and steady step. Every stone was squared 
and in its place in the altar before the offering was 
laid on it. The humble birth; the poverty; the 
life of obedience to the law of righteousness purer 
than snow 

" That 's bolted by the northern blasts, twice o'er; " 

the temptation in the wilderness ; the ministry of 
love; the words of power; the sorrow and miracle 
of Bethany; the hate and treachery of men; the 
forgiveness of enemies ; the thorns, the nails, the 
bearing of the cross, — all these had to be accom- 
plished before the end came. Christ went through 
what man goes through, or can go through, touch- 
ing every human part, relation, and need, preserv- 
ing His obedience to the end, doing all the will of 
the Father, and righteously triumphing for and in 
weak humanity, and then, stretched on the shame- 
ful tree, as He was about to yield His spirit, could 



86 Sermons. 



He cry with a loud voice, " It is finished ! " An 
offering for human sin was made by that strong 
and tender love, and nothing was incomplete. As 
even the clothes in the sepulchre were rolled up 
and laid by themselves when Christ arose, nothing 
was left undone. The resurrection of Jesus from 
the dead is the confirmation, and, as it were, celes- 
tial touch, or crown, put on Christian hope, that 
carries it across the confines of death into the 
worlds beyond. " Blessed be the God and Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his 
abundant mercy hath begotten us again into a 
lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and 
undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in 
heaven for you.'' 

Christian hope may be seen to be something 
sure and stable in its nature, lastly, because as a 
matter of experience, there is a strong and inde- 
structible expectation, the fruit of the spirit of 
Christ, which is awaked in the Christian soul and 
the Christian church, and has always been so in 
every age and every believing mind. There is 
nothing more inspiring in the study of history than 
to trace the beginnings of this new hope in Chris- 
tian civilization, and its ennobling influence in 
public morals, law, and government, the treatment 
of oppressed classes, the social elevation of woman, 



Christian Hope. 87 

the higher uses of property, in art, science, litera- 
ture, politics and every phase of human life, form- 
ing the spring of progress, and having in it a 
certain faculty of prophecy, in which, as a German 
writer says, "the longing heart goes forth to meet 
beforehand great and new creations and hastens 
to anticipate the mighty future; " above all, mak- 
ing the soul invincible to evil, come in whatever 
shape it may, in poverty, old age, sickness, prison, 
wreck, war, the contempt of the world and the 
violence of active persecution ; or whether it come 
in the more hidden trials and struggles of the 
spirit. This hope has shown itself able to bear 
and do all things. The lowness of nature is raised 
by it; the darkness of nature is illumined by it; 
and we are too far along in the history of the 
world, for any one to deny the psychologic fact, 
that men who sooner or later lose in life's fight 
their native or instinctive hope, receive through 
Christianity something stronger and higher that 
does not leave them. There can be no delusion 
here. There is a hope which comes into the 
mind, however inexplicable, which was not there 
before, — a new instinct of a new nature. It is, as 
the Scriptures call it, " a living hope," — an ac- 
tive principle working by love and purifying the 
heart. " He that believeth hath the witness in 
himself; " for it is faith in eternal things which is 



88 Sermo7ts. 



at the bottom of this hope, and it is the outcome 
of a new spiritual life within. 

I believe that this hope is the privilege of every 
Christian, so that the glory of the Invisible whom 
he follows, accompanies, exalts, and glorifies him 
also ; but I affirm, that, notwithstanding the con- 
fident tone of unbelieving men, or " free-religion- 
ists," whose freedom is in cutting themselves off 
from Christ, — notwithstanding the acumen shown 
in their theories, they have in their hearts no firm 
assurance of hope like that which held the hearts 
of the early disciples in the first ages of the 
Church when persecution after persecution swept 
over it like ocean tempests, and which is symbol- 
ized by a rude anchor carved on the tombs of 
Christians in the Roman catacombs, and which 
has sometimes been called the ante-Nicene faith 
of the Church of the catacombs. Then Christian- 
ity meant tribulation, and most probably death; 
but it meant also hope that overcame trouble and 
death. It was a hope that held the ship on a 
lee shore, because it was fastened upon divine 
strength. But men who reject Christ, work in- 
wardly in their own minds and thus continually 
narrow the grounds of hope, which must look 
forward, or be dropped into the infinite. It is not 
what we do, but it is what God has done and is 
doing for and in us, — the immanent God; on 



Christian Hope, S9 

whom a spiritual hope lays hold, entering into the 

... These men, therefore, by their subjective 
and rationalistic methods cannot arrive at a sure 
hope ; and as their faith is held in solution so their 
hope is constantly changing. They are ever learn- 
ing but never able to come to the knowledge of 

_ truth. A child mav come to this knowledge 
sooner than they. Their religion is a religion not 
of hope but of despair. They never reach a restful 
union with God, in which the mind, however it be 
a learner, has a consciousness of staying itself on 
a higher power and love, with an inner grasp upon 
the divine. He who has this hope enjoys a com- 
munion with the divine. He wins the blessed 
unity which is in God. A " new marvellous light " 
arises in him and spreads through his being. 
There is a letting in of the love of God to the 
soul which expels its gloom and selfishness ; and 
selfishness must be pressed out of true hope. In 
the instance of any one of us who knows at all 
what life is. has not the hope which perhaps was 

st cherished been already partially or wholly 
laid in ruins? Has not the dear one been taken 
upon whom we built with a confidence that ought 

have been placed upon God alone? Has He 
suffered us to enjoy thoroughly, even here, one 
hope in which He was not centred? Does not dis- 
appointment sooner or later come to such a selfish 



90 Sermons. 



hope? And it is best that it should, for there is an 
element of moral falseness in it, and such a hope 
cannot have a settled bliss in the moral economy 
of God. But, on the contrary, there has sprung 
up something calm and sweet, like a pure light in 
the Christian heart, which grows stronger and 
stronger, which thrives under trial, which lives in 
the storm, which is above change, which partakes 
of the divine nature, which is so marked a fact in 
Christian consciousness that it must have a real- 
ity ; for it is the same in all believers, it wears the 
same features now that it wore in the times of 
primitive Christianity; it is a hope which maketh 
not ashamed ; which has an invincible energy of 
goodness; which enters into the joy of the Lord; 
which soars above time and is filled with a 
heavenly peace. Such pleasure experienced here 
in God, such openings of the soul into His love, 
must look forward at some time to a bliss- 
ful enjoyment of Him, — - to the great vision of 
God and His eternal peace. It is this simple 
fact which makes Christianity, notwithstanding 
its solemn truths, a cheerful religion, and which 
gives it a quality of joy that fills it as with 
a perpetual sunshine. In the apostolic church 
this awoke the voice of song and brought to 
the world the life of a new blossoming spring- 
time rich in its promise of great things, — its 



Christian Hope. 91 

true golden age, not pas*- but present and to 
come. 

It was a mediaeval Christianity born in the cells 
of monasteries, and which also tinged the Protes- 
tantism that came out of it. that brought again 
over the world the clouds of doubt, darkness, and 
despair, and made the scenery of religious life 
like the infernal landscape, powerful but gloomy, 
through which the poet Dante walked. 

This hope of the Christian, then, is a great hope, 
a bright, clear; and steady hope, surpassing all the 
vague desires of the natural heart, beautiful as the 
poetry of the heart sometimes makes these to ap- 
pear, — yet earthly and evanescent, like the painted 
clouds that pile up in the western sky of a sum- 
mer's sunset turning ashy and deathly pale when 
the light fades out of them, But the " things 
hoped for" are too fair, too high, too pure, even 
to be conceived. The prayer, indeed, of this 
hope is not for a life without trials, but, with the 
apostle, the believer would fight that he might 
win ; he would endure self-denial that he might rise 
above the sensual into the spiritual; and while the 
hope sustains and cheers, he would also " know 
Christ" and the fellowship of His sufferings, and 
sound the depths of Christ's holy life and perfect 
victory. My dear hearer, is your hope thus well- 
grounded? When the storm comes, does the 



92 Sermons. 



anchor hold? When a strong and unexpected 
temptation falls like a sudden blast on you, 
does the anchor hold? In the face of real 
affliction — of death — would it hold? Does your 
hope take hold of the unchangeable love of God? 
If so, when tempted, " rejoice, and show the same 
diligence, with the full assurance of hope unto the 
end." Armed with a hope which has in it this 
sure promise, go forth to a life of goodness. Ex- 
pect to achieve great things. Never yield to the 
spirit of doubt and despondency. Awake from 
barren dreamings. Better to have been nourished 
in a Pagan creed, better to have been born in the 
old Greek land where there was something still 
bright and heroic in Nature, than to have known 
Christ and yet to be ashamed of Him and His ser- 
vice ; than once to have had the great hope of 
Christ and to let it die out in unmanly fear. The 
world needs brave men. The cause of Christ 
demands earnest helpers. Be assured that next 
to the sin of unbelief is the sin of indifference 
which is the death of greatness because it is the 
death of hope. 



VI. 
<etje <Cf)tit>lihe spirit. 



VI. 

THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, savin?. 
Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven t And Jesus 
called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of 
them, and said, Verily I say unto you. Except ye be con- 
verted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter 
into the kingdom of heaven. — Matt, xviii. 1-3. 



AA 



E are told in another gospel that the event 
spoken of by Matthew took place soon 
after the scene of the Transfiguration, and grew 
out of the Lord's having chosen three disciples, 
Peter, James, and John, to go up the mountain with 
him, thus lifting them for an instant into the light 
of supernatural manifestation, whereby they seem 
to have been unduly exalted; while the other dis- 
ciples, moved by envy, were as unduly depressed. 
Hence sprang up strife as to who of them was 
greatest. 

We may conceive Peter, with his spirit of self- 
assertion, imperiously urging his claims to the 
primacy, not only because he had been upon the 
glorified mount, but, because at a former time, 
the Lord had singled him out. by declaring that 



96 Sermons. 



in his confession of faith, he was " Peter," and 
upon this rock (ravrrj rrj irerpa) Christ would 
build his church ; Andrew retorted that he (An- 
drew) was the disciple who had first found the 
Messiah; John, the meditative disciple, yet with 
earthly fire smouldering in his heart shown by his 
calling down a thunderbolt on a Samaritan village, 
awaked from his reflections by the discussion, 
claimed that he had received tokens of peculiar 
confidence, and most tender friendship from the 
Master; while Philip set forth, in his turn, the 
direct personal call of the Lord to him, " Follow 
me." 

In these honest but still unspiritual minds, 
hardly raised above the common ideas of Judaism 
in which they had been reared, and having as yet 
no clear conception of a kingdom without form, 
of a spiritual kingdom, the strife went on, the 
Lord seeming not to notice it, until they had 
reached their home in Capernaum, and then he 
asked them what it was they had disputed about 
by the way, and read to them that immortal lesson 
of humility. 

The truth which the words reveal to us, and this 
scene of a child set up to preach to angry men 
excited to controversy for precedence, would seem 
to be, that for one to enter the kingdom which 
Christ came to found, he must become childlike in 



The Childlike Spirit. 97 

heart, since Christ in these words made a little 
child the door-keeper of his eternal kingdom. 
What would those who were then living under 
Caesar, whether Jews or Romans, at the period of 
the world-wide expansion of the Roman empire 
that aimed at universal dominion, say to the set- 
ting up of a child as the symbol of a kingdom 
which was to absorb and outlast its own ! 

This kingdom was a realm of the spirit where 
there is no room for strife of precedence, where 
he that is great must be as he that serves, and 
where no one rules but every one serves, even 
as the Master did ; for " the spirit of Christ is 
what we are to seek and imitate; it is to our 
spiritual life we must take heed if we wish not to 
be cut off from Christ." We need not wear a 
seamless robe, we need not deprive ourselves of 
worldly possessions, we need not deny ourselves 
home and domestic relations, we need not be 
crucified as Christ was, but we should be meek, 
loving, and holy as he was. 

Is it not, indeed, a radical change in human nature 
when a man comes to see the Christlike excellence 
of living to serve, instead of living to rule? This 
is a new spirit. " Except ye be converted, and be- 
come as little children, ye cannot enter the king- 
dom," — the kingdom of the spirit of Christ. One 
must be converted, turned about, so that he treads 

7 



98 Sermons. 



back his life, its windings of pride and wastes of 
selfishness, until he becomes a child fresh from 
the hand of the Creator, standing face to face w r ith 
eternity, without a wish or will of his own, rejoic- 
ing to take from the divine hand the gift of life. 

" Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven," because it is this poverty of 
spirit that constitutes the receptivity for God and 
all He gives. To love God is the yielding up of 
the selfish principle. This humility in the sight 
of God under the teachings of the spiritual law, 
is the preparation for the gift of eternal life. 

But the question is, will a man be willing to be- 
come a child? Will he give up his self-righteous- 
ness? Will he lay himself beside the spiritual 
law? Will he ask for help because he is helpless? 
Will he show by his actions that he believes as 
well as confesses that he is weak, that not an 
act or a desire is thoroughly pure, that in him 
dwells no good thing, that there is nothing in 
him that can save him? Will the strong man 
become a little child so that a new heart shall be 
given him? 

Humility is the most abused of the Christian 
graces, and because it is a childlike quality, it has 
sometimes been made to stand for an unmanly 
and contemptible quality, a creeping hypocritical 
thing, a spiritless travesty of the real virtue. 



The Childlike Spirit. 99 

Humility is among the most unselfish of the 
Christian graces, it is not mean but manly, not 
seeming but true. It is being just to all even to 
one's self. It takes nothing to itself which does 
not belong to it. It is brave enough to confess 
its fault, and it is this spiritual abasement, this 
lowly but courageous repentance, willing not only 
to condemn itself, but glad as a little child to re- 
ceive new life from God's hand, that opens the 
pure rewards of the heavenly kingdom. 

Let us look at this childlike spirit, which is the 
spirit of humility, and we shall see that it is capa- 
ble of development into other similar but distinct 
qualities, though all of them are mingled with that 
pervading humility in whose soil they are, as it 
were, rooted, and which unites them all. 

The first characteristic of this childlike spirit 
would seem to be its trustfulness, which is the 
prime beauty and excellence of childhood, so that 
he who can learn nothing from the trustfulness 
of children is dull-hearted. Martin Luther said, 
beholding his children at play, " How precious 
little children are to the Lord, and this is because 
they receive all things with such a simple trust." 

To receive with this childlike trust, not doubt- 
ing, from the hand of God, the unspeakable gift 
of His Son, as one receives His lower gifts of light, 
air, water, and food, appropriating and feeding 



ioo Sermons. 



upon this spiritual gift, this bread from heaven, 

unto eternal life, is the essence of Christian faith, 

and is so elementary and familiar a principle in 

Christian experience, that we need not dwell upon 

it, though the greatest things are wrapped in it as 

a germ of the everlasting life. 

A second characteristic of the childlike spirit of 

the kingdom of heaven, though it be like separating 

by a prism one ray of light from another where 

they are one, is that of truth, or truthfulness, which 

quality enables one to see clearly into the things 

that belong to God, and to distinguish them from 

those that belong to our mere earthly life. The 

child, as retaining more freshly the spiritual image 

of God in which he was made, the ideal of the 

divine nature of which he is the" offspring, has 

something of the intuition of higher truth, 

"And feels through all his fleshly dress 
Bright shoots of everlastingness." 

This world is strange to the child, and by his 
nearer kinship with the spiritual world, spiritual 
things are more real to him than material, and his 
view of this reveals to him truths which the man 
with difficulty retains and recovers, — so a keen 
observer of human nature has said. This intuition 
of the unseen, this freedom from error and deceit, 
this seeing things as they are without an attempt 
at distorting them, this loyal love of truth begun 



The Childlike Spirit. 101 

in inexperience and only won back through faith, 
when lost, which is the opening of the eye to 
see truth, should be carefully nourished in the 
child. As he whispers his morning and evening 
prayer without a cloud between him and God, let 
no dogmas that men have invented chill his simple 
and true faith ! 

This truthfulness should go on without a break, 
or doubt, or suspicion, into youth, manhood, and 
age, so that what God's grace and an instinctive 
affection had taught the child, should become the 
deliberate choice of the mature mind. Those 
Jewish mothers who brought their children to 
Christ to lay his hand upon them and bless them, 
had already some ri^ht instinct in regard to divine 
things, and some true appreciation of what Christ's 
religion was. 

I quote the words of Thomas de Ouincey, which 
have more force as coming from one not usually 
regarded as authority in religious matters : — 

•- My opinion is that when circumstances favour, where 
the heart is deep, where humility and tenderness exist in 
ngth, where the situation is favourable as to solitude 
and as to genial feelings, children have a specific power 
of contemplating the truth which departs as they enter 
the world. It is clear to me that children upon elemen- 
tary paths which require no knowledge of the world to 
Avel, tread more firmly than men, have a more pathetic 



102 Sermons. 



sense of justice, and, according to the immortal ode of 
our great laureate, ' On the intimations of Immortality in 
Childhood/ a far closer communion with God. Observe 
in St. Matthew xxi. 15, who were those that, crying 
in the temple, made the first public recognition of 
Christianity. Then, if you say, ' Oh, but children echo 
what they hear,' I must request you to extend your read- 
ing into verse 16, where you will find that the testimony 
of these children as bearing an original value, was ratified 
by the higher testimony ; the recognition of these chil- 
dren did itself receive a heavenly recognition. And this 
could not have been unless there were children in Jeru- 
salem who saw into truth with a far sharper eye than 
Sanhedrims and Rabbis." 

There is power and instruction in these words, 
for it is a noteworthy fact that in unperverted 
childhood there is a singleness of spirit which 
shows that truth is the constitutional law, or the 
moral atmosphere, so to speak, of the mind. 

We see in the believer, who is the child new- 
born into the kingdom, the same crystalline truth- 
fulness which pierces through error and outward 
appearances into the inward heart of truth. He 
discerns right and wrong without reasoning much 
upon it He puts aside as flimsy webs the fine- 
spun sophistries of men. The only thing in the 
world, it is said, which Napoleon could not under- 
stand, was an honest man ; and the world in like 
manner cannot comprehend this truthfulness which 



The Childlike Spirit. 103 

is an essential quality of the childlike mind re- 
, newed by the spirit of truth. So the ancients 
thought Christians to be atheists and the most 
wicked of men because they were simply honest, 
and without outward religious forms and pretension. 
This is, as St. Bernard characterizes it, that unctio 
11011 eruditio, 11011 scientia sed conscientia, that is not 
learning, but the teaching or anointing of the spirit, 
the knowledge from within not from without. Such 
a mind is able to recognize the presence, work, 
and will of Christ wherever it is manifested, and 
to appropriate to itself in the world and in the 
Word whatever is divine, even as the children of 
Jerusalem, first of all, recognized the Messiah, the 
King of Truth, and gave him a royal reception of 
loving hearts. The renewed mind is led up by 
the spirit to a higher eminence than the unspirit- 
ual mind, however far-sighted, can occupy. The 
eye is cleared of its mists of error and passion, so 
that it sees far over the broad fields of divine 
knowledge, and has a clear perception of heavenly 
things even in this world, and which is above 
science's dry light. The theology of the schools 
cannot teach this, but it is the wisdom that comes 
from above, so that humble persons sometimes 
possess an'astonishing insight into spiritual things ; 
indeed, I recall a poor labouring woman, the wife 
of a light-house keeper, who led a lonely life on 



1 04 Sermons. 



the stormy coast of Massachusetts, and whose 
ever-trimmed light had been the joy of many a 
tempest-driven vessel, who seemed to have this 
spiritual intuition as if she were taught first-hand 
by the spirit, for her only book was the Bible ; 
and it was more profitable to talk with her on 
practical religious subjects than to read works of 
Christian philosophy, for she knew things by ex- 
perience ; God had taught her; she saw into truth 
with an unobstructed eye; and, to my thinking, 
the " doctrine " of Christ which flows from a per- 
sonal union with Him and the inward teachings of 
His spirit, the principles of eternal life such as the 
children of God who live by faith have, — this doc- 
trine or teaching has come down to us through 
just such simple hearts, and this constitutes the 
doctrine of the Church, not as taught by creeds 
or bishops or ministers, but by the consensus of 
the faith of simple believers, whether laymen or 
ministers, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, 
in whom the truth ever lives, for it is the united 
testimony and consciousness of childlike spirits 
taught by Christ, and forming the one testimony 
of the spirit through the ages. Faith in the Lord 
Christ is that Christian confession for which the 
martyrs died and in which the first believers lived, 
and that is simple and profound ; so that the 
modern multiplication of extensive ecclesiastical 



The Childlike Spirit. 105 

test-creeds is an evil, becoming, as these creeds 
sometimes do, occasions of stumbling, and of com- 
promise, and prevarication, and half-hearted sub- 
scription. Creeds, indeed, are but symbols when 
the reality has come. They do not even serve as 
a protection or perpetuation of the truth. Chris- 
tianity, at this age of the world, may freely trust its 
defence to the spirit and life of true believers, and 
not to words ; for a creed is a word, but faith is a 
life ; a creed is human and subject to change, but 
faith is divine and eternal. 

There is, once more, the quality of freedom, 
which belongs to the new childlike spirit of the 
kingdom, and which makes that liberty of the 
children of God, wherein the legal artificiality of 
the Pharisee, as well as the self-complacent rigidity 
of the mere moralist, both of them disappear, and 
the spirit of Christian liberty takes their place. 
In such a heart there is a glad freedom in right 
doing which the sublimest principle of duty with- 
out love could not inspire; even as the child is 
free in every act while yet dependent, so the child 
of God is brought into that freedom wherein the 
spirit of bondage again to fear is removed, and 
the man rejoices once more to act freely, as he 
did when he was a child. He loves the law which 
he obeys, and submits to it as a delight, not feeling 
it as a yoke. 



io6 Sermons. 



And, allied to this, there is the quality of un- 
worldliness, or denial of the worldly principle, 
which was the peculiar lesson taught by the 
Saviour to his disciples, and which I have touched 
upon necessarily in speaking of the underlying 
grace of humility. This is the spirit w T hich, with- 
out seeming to feel the loss, denies itself worldly 
power, gain, and success, for Christ's dear sake, 
even as the child has had as yet no fevered dream 
of power, and it is the practical outworking of the 
Christian principle of self-denial. To the unspirit- 
ual mind there is no greater misery than to be 
weak, better anything than to be weak, better to 
perish than to be weak, and such a mind is led to 
despise goodness because there is often in good- 
ness apparent weakness ; and if one to be good 
must be weak, then, like Macbeth on the barren 
heath, it welcomes the curse evil brings, if it 
bring power with it, power that is palpable in 
some worldly prize, crown or success, and that 
lifts a man above the mass of incapables and 
stamps him with a masterful and royal individu- 
ality. It is safe to say, as an Arabian proverb 
has it, that the love of power lies concealed 
in every man's heart like a bud which awaits 
a favourable moment, an hour of sunshine, to 
open it; for did not the apostles of our 
Lord under the eye of their meek and divine 



The Childlike Spirit. 107 

Master, contend as to who of them should be 
greatest? 

I do not deny that there is a true use of the 
ambitious principle, or desire for perfection, which 
is implanted in us for the development of our 
mental energies, and that this is a spring of pro- 
gress in intellectual power and wisdom, and is 
meant to be so, but the wrong use of the ambitious 
principle consists in its selfish character. It is the 
striving for power and not for the good uses of 
power. It is seeking self-glory and not self- 
reformation. It is not bent upon the general but 
the individual happiness. It is aiming to make 
one's self greater not better. It is a thirst for ap- 
plause whether the act deserve true praise or not, 
for to seek one's own glory, the Scripture says, is 
not glory. It is thrusting others aside or down in 
order that one may be first. This is not a princi- 
ple which is established in the universal ends of 
the divine kingdom, its law of justice, its true 
" glory and honour and immortality," the praise of 
God, the approbation of Christ the righteous 
Redeemer, the Christlike elevation of the nature 
and the happiness of humanity, but in the earthly 
end of self-glory. 

This principle of competition in all one does and 
is, carried beyond reasonable bounds, is becoming 
an alarming evil in a democratic country like ours, 



io8 Sermons, 



entering into every work, into the business world, 
the social world, the school, the university, indus- 
trial pursuits, and matters of less importance even, 
of play and amusement, so that almost everything 
is done by competition " through strife and vain- 
glory/' and there seems to be no zest in doing 
anything except as a matter of rivalry; but it is 
a zest that has often a bitter fruit, and it goes to 
destroy the nobleness of work, the profitableness 
of labour, the joy of play, the worth of life. The 
cultivation of the principle of selfish ambition 
eats out like an acid the simplicity of a man's 
character as hardly no other passion does. It is 
so poisonous that nothing healthful grows by the 
side of it. It kills sympathy and every generous 
motive. Knowledge is not sought for for knowl- 
edge's sake, it does not know how charming 
is divine philosophy; but knowledge is gained 
whereby to win a reputation, to employ it as a 
sharp sword to carve a name with. This passion 
would rule by power, but men hate its rule. It 
would command respect by its display of superior 
ability; it would make men honour and respect it 
whether they will or no ; but the honour it gets, 
having no love in it, is poor and unsatisfying. He 
who gives a cup of cold water to a disciple in the 
name of a disciple, or because Christian love 
prompts him, gets a higher reward in his soul than 



The Childlike Spirit. 109 

the man who drinks every cup of human praise 
that the world can put to his lips. The faith which 
overcomes the world and which sets things in their 
right relations, alone will enable a man to subdue 
the temptation of ambition. Have we not all felt 
the restless movings and strivings of this principle 
sufficiently to learn, or at least to desire to learn, 
to put it down, to extinguish it forever lest it con- 
sume us and we lose the pure crown of God's 
heavenly kingdom? I might go on to show that 
greatness is to be gained in far different ways, and 
that though thus humble and childlike, this quality 
of unworldliness, or unworldly goodness, is no 
principle of weakness but strength, that goodness 
is stronger than greatness, because ultimately great- 
ness rests on goodness, or on a purpose that is in 
harmonv with the ri^ht rule of the universe. 
Heroic men have been childlike men, unconscious 
of greatness. Some one called one of the greatest 
English poets " an immortal child." We have at 
all events the Saviour's implicit word, that in the 
moral and spiritual realm which he founded, he is 
greatest who becomes as a little child, who is child- 
like in spirit, for a man then comes by faith into 
that kingdom in which he is near the celestial 
springs, the will, the spirit, and the joy of God. 
There his powers are purified from envy and 
self-seeking, from evervthing weak and earthly, 



1 1 o Sermons. 



and are filled with a more potent spirit, are lifted 
out of the low life of self in which they soon be- 
come wasted, into a divine life raised above self 
in which the powers grow stronger, nobler, and 
more beautiful. 

There is need briefly to mention but one more 
quality of this childlike spirit of the kingdom, which 
it would be wrong not to mention if we would come 
at its deepest nature, the nature of those children 
of light who walk in the light of the Most High 
and do always behold the face of the Father, and 
that is filial love. 

The virile principle of Christian character con- 
sists in the education of the will in right action, in 
doing those things, as good soldiers, which like 
scaling a fort it is difficult for human nature to 
do ; but the childlike principle of Christian char- 
acter consists in the education of a dependent 
spirit, the loving recognition of the Father, for this 
love is the essence of the spirit of the Son. It is 
the perfecting of the law, or the bringing to a com- 
plete spiritual obedience of, and union with, the 
divine will. The heart has been injured by sin 
more than the head. It is the heart's profound 
separation from the loving will of the Father that 
has caused the loss of the knowledge of God, since 
" he that loveth knoweth God," and to be able to 
return to God and say, " Our Father," requires 



The Childlike Spirit. 1 1 _ 

something more than a judicial process of the rea- 
son, or a forced acknowledgment of the conscience, 
or a deliberate choice of the will; it must be a 
movement of the heart's deepest affections toward 
the Father. In any man who becomes His true 
child it implies a sincere return from every other 
object of love unto God, a new heavenly bent, a 
cheerful sympathy in those things God loves, a 
loving service of His holy will, a going about to 
do good in imitation of His Son's constant benefi- 
cence, a childlike confidence in all that He does, 
and a delightful sense of fellowship with the 
Father. The natural man though set in the 
magnificent and variegated garden of God's abound- 
ing goodness and having all things richly to enjoy, 
hides away from the voice of the Father that 
sounds in the solemn eventide hour of reflec- 
tion like the voice of doom to the weakened 
conscience. 

Nature indeed acknowledges God after a fashion, 
outwardly, as the force that drives the worlds, and 
the beauty that adorns them. It bows before Him 
in public worship, enshrines Him in the hills and 
seats Him among the inaccessible stars, but na- 
ture does not know Him as the Father of spirits. 
The natural man unrenewed in his mind would not 
have God come nearer than in Nature; he would 
not acknowledge God in the spirit, nor have Him 



1 1 2 Sermons. 



enter the soul to cleanse and sanctify it, and to 
dwell in it as a holy loving Father. 

This privilege is given us through our union 
with Christ and coming into His secret, " neither 
knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he 
to whom the Son will reveal Him." " And because 
ye are sons God hath sent forth the spirit of his 
Son into your hearts whereby ye cry, Abba, 
Father." 

To those who truly believe it is given to be 
made the sons of God, to have the love of God 
shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, 
and to know and love and to be known and loved 
by the Father. Our souls are orphaned by sin, 
are strangers to peace, are longing for love. Here 
is the everlasting love for which the soul was made, 
and for which it pines. The soul itself loves in 
loving God. Here the wandering child returns to 
his Father and lays his head on His breast. Here 
he gladly brings his cares, doubts, fightings, ambi- 
tions, temptations, disappointments, sorrows, to the 
Fatherly heart of unchanging love. Therefore it 
is, that spiritual joy is one of the most heavenly 
of the Christian graces. Christ was a child in 
Bethlehem. This event, historic in time, revealed 
the joyful truth of regeneration and the new-birth 
of humanity. It was everlasting life come in the 
lowliness of the flesh. We think of the holy child 



The Childlike Spirit. 1 1 3 

at Christmastide ; but why not think of a truth of 
such spiritual reach and import at other times 
and always, so that the divine childhood may be- 
come a constant spring of joy and praise and new 
life in us? 

And when the child Jesus sat among the doc- 
tors and taught them of the Father, a new religion 
arose. 

Let us, dear friends, strive to find this great 
heart of the Father, to be enfolded in its paternal 
embrace, where alone are to be found peace, 
purity, light, riches, honour, power, love, hope, joy. 
Let us arise and go to the Father, confessing our 
sins; and He is faithful and just to forgive us our 
sins, for He is not afar off but is nigh unto them 
who are of a broken spirit; and His kingdom is a 
present kingdom, a spiritual kingdom, and though 
barred to a proud heart yet stands open with all 
its gates to every childlike soul and none such 
shall fail of its pure joys. 



VII. 
% Song of f reeoom. 



VII. 

A SONG OF FREEDOM. 

And they sung as it were a new song. — Rev. xiv. 3, part 

of verse. 

HPHE man who makes a song that the people 
*- love to sing is a common benefactor; and it 
is for this reason that the poets, the song-makers, 
are set like stars in the constellation of illustrious 
names, for they give expression to those yearnings 
that are beyond the desires of every-day life, they 
utter the deeper hopes, wants, fears, joys, and aspi- 
rations of the spiritual nature. 
An English writer says : — 

" No wonder the people of Scotland loved Burns as 
perhaps never people loved a poet. He not only sympa- 
thized with the wants, trials, joys, and sorrows of their lot, 
but he interpreted these to themselves, and interpreted 
them to others, — and this too, in their own language, 
made musical and glorified by genius. He made the 
ploughman proud of his toils since Robbie Burns had 
shared and sung them. In looking to him the Scotch 
people have seen an impersonation of themselves. " 

A song, therefore, that the people take to their 
hearts and sing, is expressive of something univer- 



1 1 8 Sermons. 



sal, and that belongs to man as man, sometimes 
aspiring, heroic, and joyful, but too often blended 
like the songs of Burns, with the " sad music of 
humanity. " 

Although the significance of the new song of 
heaven is something to which we can approximate 
only by the exercise of a reverent imagination, yet 
there is a hint in the following chapter which may 
aid in the interpretation of this new song. " And 
I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with 
fire : and them that had gotten the victory over 
the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, 
and over the number of his name, stand on the 
sea of glass, having the harps of God. And 
they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, 
and the song of the Lamb." How strange the 
mingling of thought here, or this joining the song 
of Moses with the song of the Lamb ! Yet this 
may afford, at least, a suggestion, which shall help 
us in coming at the real significance of the new 
song, so that from the ruder and earthlier strains 
of the song of Moses, mingled it may be with 
human sinfulness, passion, and revenge, we may 
divine something of the character of the higher 
song; and even as the song of Moses, which 
was sung on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, 
was a song of victory over the enemies of God 
and His church, when He had led His ancient 



A Song of Freedom. 1 1 9 

people forth by His servant Moses from their 
bondage, and wrought for them a great deliver- 
ance ; in like manner, we have reason to con- 
clude that the song of the Lamb, which is so 
closely blended with this, as if its spirit, or echo, 
were caught up into heaven, would be, also, a 
song of freedom, a triumph-note for some kind 
of deliverance; and, as it is called a "new song," 
it is doubtless the son^ of a new and higher 
victory. 

A song is, above all, an expression of the heart, 
something uncompelled and spontaneous, the irre- 
pressible upspringing of an inward emotion. A bird 
sings because it cannot help singing, and because 
its little heart is thrilling with an overflowing joy ; 
and so they who sing the " new song " have had, 
doubtless, some true experience of a great good 
and joy which causes them to sing. 

The u new song.*' therefore, we cannot but be- 
lieve, must be learned in this world though it be 
lisped by a stammering tougue ; must be born in 
the humble, listening heart amid the conflicts of 
this earth, as a true heart-experience. 

I think I am right in saying that it is the ex- 
perience of every thoughtful man that all the real 
misery (I do not say suffering) he ever had, has 
sprung, in some way, from spiritual wrong. If he 
have lost friends, which is one of our great natural 



1 20 Sermons. 



griefs, yet if sin had not thrust itself into this sor- 
row, if the soul of the friend as well as one's own, 
had been perfectly true to God, and to right, one 
would find in the bereavement a cause to rejoice, 
for to the holy dead God reveals the fulness of 
His love, and removes them from the tyranny 
of evil, and they come back to us immortal 
and glorious — 

" They haunt the silence of the breast, 
Imaginations calm and fair, 
The memory like a cloudless air, 
The conscience as a sea at rest, 

" But when the heart is full of sin, 
And doubt beside the portal waits, 
They can but listen at the gates, 
And hear the household jars within." 

It is the conscious want of the love of God, 
manifesting itself in acts of selfishness, ingratitude, 
and treason to truth and duty, — it is always this 
that has made the human spirit wail. Selfishness is 
a constant pain, and love a constant joy. A good 
heart, or a good deed, though involving self-denial, 
never in itself gave misery. If we are persecuted 
for righteousness' sake, blessed are we, and there 
is light in the soul serene as heaven, which cannot 
be quenched ; and if we are oppressed for a wrong 
act which we have not done, we may bear the 
oppression with some degree of cheerful fortitude, 



A Soyig of Freedom. i 2 1 

until the time of our redemption draws nigh. But 
when we know that we have done the wrong, that 

- have been the proud, selfish, wicked hearts who 
are self-accused bv the law of ri^ht in us, then the 
just consequences of evil are hard to bear, and they 
become a galling: voke. I do not denv the manv 
natural sorrows of life, and that they are some- 
times painful beyond human power to endure, and 
are an overweight that prevents us from rising to 
the height of our own capacities, but we would be 

•■ng from a divine strength to bear troubles 
and sufferings which fall to our lot in this life, and 
they would be only for our discipline and perfec- 
tion, were we without transgression. These would 
be outside sufferings. But it is the feeling that we 
have acted unrighteously, that we have stained our 

ill's honour, that we have been unthankful to the 
Heavenly Father, that we have been unforgiving, 
unloving, unjust, and untrue to our fellow-men, 
that we have sold our birthright, as sons of God, 
for contemptible trifles, and degraded our natures 
to evil that were made to be holy and divine: it is 
this that consumes the spirit within us. 

This is the real burden of life, bear it as we 
may, hide it as we may ; for is it not true that no 
other one can really injure us but ourselves, that 
nothing outside of him can touch the good man, 
that there is nothing in him that evil can find, as 



122 Sermons. 



far as he is true, and that a man's only hindrance 
to the full enjoyment of God, even in this world, 
is his own wrong act ? This secretly weighs a 
man down. This fills him with darkness and 
confusion of spirit. If we are raised for one in- 
stant by the quick motion of faith, by the absorb- 
ing exercise of prayer, by the unselfish act of pure 
obedience, into the light and liberty of God's 
presence, we gain inward freedom and peace, 
we experience an absolute deliverance from the 
tyranny of evil. 

We may perceive, then, why the power of sin in 
our human nature is called in the Scriptures a 
" bondage." " Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the 
servant of sin." Again it is said, " While they 
promise them liberty they themselves are the ser- 
vants of corruption, for of whom a man is over- 
come, of the same is he brought in bondage." 
Although its power is something imperceptibly 
progressive, it is none the less real, for sin aims at 
the complete enslavement of the mind. It is pure 
absolutism. Let the bondsman strive once to free 
himself, to shake himself loose from his bonds, to 
change his own nature, and he will see what a 
grasp evil has. He will discover the depth of 
its power, that it goes through all the infinite 
reaches of his nature, and even in this life, and 



A Song of Freedom. 123 

perhaps very early, it begins to show its unsatis- 
fying falsehood, its intolerable pain, its iron 
yoke. 

It may be that you have seen a man bending 
under this yoke like Samson Agonistes. Martin 
Luther, whose name after these four hundred 
years resounds through the world, in his stone 
cell at Erfurth was only one such strong man in 
the pains of spiritual conflict. There are thousands 
at this moment, who like him, are crying in the 
anguish of their spirit, " Who shall deliver us from 
the body of this death?" How can we escape 
from this slavery? 

To be freed from the power of evil would soothe 
all pangs, would wipe away all tears, sorrow, care, 
and would restore to the life-giving presence and 
joy of God. Can we not then begin, in some 
feeble manner I grant, to perceive or imagine what 
maybe the significance of the a new song"? It 
is in truth a song of freedom, and we need not 
wonder that it is represented to be like the sound 
of many waters, the outpouring of innumerable 
hearts on the free shore of eternity, for God has 
made the soul to be free and to have no law over it 
but the law of love. 

There are, indeed, but few such chords that vi- 
brate in human hearts. Sorrow is one of these. 
Coleridge said that at the news of Nelson's death 



124 Sermons. 



no man felt himself a stranger to another ; and of 
these universal chords, that of freedom is also one. 
Such a spontaneous cry rises from an enslaved 
nation, whose chains are broken by some God- 
inspired man. Never shall I forget the mighty 
shout I heard that went up from the whole people 
of Florence, gathered together in the great market- 
square of the beautiful city on the Arno, at the 
news of a decisive victory gained over the power- 
ful enemy of Italian independence, — Austria. A 
new unlooked-for joy poured into the hearts of 
the suffering and long-oppressed Italian people 
that they were at length free ! 

It made them one. It overflowed their hearts 
with sudden strength, and men fell upon each 
other's necks and kissed each other, and their joy 
found expression in shouts and songs. 

So it will be a new joy in heaven to be free, to 
be free from the shameful oppression of evil. This 
will put, think you not, a new song in the mouth 
of those who are at length made free. To be 
holy and to be as pure in heart as heavenly spirits 
are, to have all the bands of selfishness broken, and 
the mind to feel the love of God in every part, to 
have such a new nature as to find perfect happi- 
ness in perfect goodness and truth, — this is the 
soul's victory. In this world we are redeemed, but 
not entirely victorious, and it is at the moment of 



A Song of Freedom. 125 

death that the apostle puts in the mouth of the 
believer the words, " Thanks be to God, which 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
Christ. ,, 

That Christian disciple, Frederick Perthes, when 
near the close of life wrote to his son, " If Paul had 
to complain of inward conflict, no other need des- 
pair because he has to do the same. From the 
first days, outward methods have been tried to 
obtain complete victory, and each Christian has 
had his own special means towards winning this 
end, but no one has won it. The prayer for help 
leads to resignation, and resignation purifies the 
soul, but the fight goes on even to the present 
time. Let us' fight to the last ! " 

The believer may, in some feeble and imperfect 
measure, in his best times, when Christ his light is 
near, be able to conceive of this state of entire vic- 
tory over, or deliverance from, sin, because he has 
in the present life yearnings after it, and prophe- 
cies of it; but to the unrenewed mind (must it 
not be so ?) this truth is not quite clear. It is, 
on the contrary, a thought which gives that mind, 
when it thinks at all, much uneasiness and confu- 
sion. For it has had fleeting tastes of sweetness 
in this earthly life, and in those pleasures into 
which God does not come, poor though they 
be, and it fears to lose those alloyed and swift- 



126 Sermons, 



passing experiences of happiness in being holy. 
It would not release entirely its hold upon these, 
for fear of losing its happiness altogether. But 
we must let go one to win the other. We must 
push off from the shore of this world to gain the 
free shore of eternity; and so complete is the vic- 
tory of heaven, that not even such an electric 
thought of evil as has been described, shall pass 
over the soul. Holiness is happiness. Goodness 
is joy. Love is freedom. There are no remains of 
the conflict of temptation. This earth has floated 
away into the abysses of infinite space. The 
enemy has vanished, and should he be again ad- 
mitted into heaven (which is not an irreverent 
hypothesis as the book of Job testifies), to appeal 
there to the inalienable freedom which belongs to 
the human spirit even in its purified and heavenly 
state, he could hold out no bribe which has any 
power to charm, or which could turn aside for an 
instant the holy currents of the soul. The spell of 
sin is broken ; and as freedom is one of those things 
that never grows old, so the song of heaven shall 
be a " new song." 

But another and higher sense remains, in which 
it would seem that the song of heaven is called 
a " new song," arising from the fact that this 
heavenly freedom which is sung, does not end in 
ourselves, in our freedom or holiness or joy, but 




A Song of Freedom. 127 

ends in Christ, and in the divine will in which 
dwells this pure and mighty power of the soul's 
deliverance from evil. 

The element of newness which we find all 
through the New Testament, fresh as the breath 
of spring, comes from the fact of God's having 
entered into humanity in Christ, changing the 
lower order of things and the whole course of evil 
and death. God coming into our nature, appear- 
ing in a world that had grown old in sin, opening 
a totally unlooked-for way of the forgiveness of 
sin, and of peace, through the sufferings of Christ, 
sowing broadcast by His spirit the seeds of eter- 
nal life in the hearts of suffering and dying men, is 
an ever new fact, and for aught I know, will be so 
in eternity, until all evil itself shall pass away from 
the universe of being. 

The salvation of the gospel is not of ourselves, 
nor at all in the course of nature, reason, or human 
will (though deeper down not unnatural nor un- 
reasonable), but " it is the gift of God." We are 
saved by hope, the Scriptures say, by something 
unexpected, unmerited, wonderful, new, and di- 
vine, springing out of the pure love of God, and 
awakening hope in the hopeless and joy in the 
sinful. 

This truth of the new and divine nature of the 
gospel of Christ may be one reason why men so 



128 Sermons. 



resolutely continue to refuse to receive honestly 
the gospel, for they will forget nothing old and 
learn nothing new. They will continue to hold 
their own ideas. They will not take the truth as 
a divine gift. They regard it as too extraordi- 
nary and mysterious a thing to be saved by the 
humiliation and sufferings of Christ, by the free 
love of God. It is out of the course of nature 
and reason. They doubt the power of God himself 
to save in it. They refuse the heavenly grace 
shining in upon them sweet as the summer's sun- 
shine. They cannot comprehend its entire free- 
ness, like the common gifts of nature, and they 
thus close up the springs of a higher hope within 
them. 

They would themselves achieve something or 
suffer something. If they cannot do anything else 
they will make the gospel a hard yoke. They 
would, by ox-like obedience to the gospel, w T in 
heaven. They would buy the free kingdom of 
the grace of God by some laborious deed, or 
render some offering whereby one can make him- 
self holy and free. 

This divine simplicity of the gospel astonishes 
men. They do not believe it. Love is always 
marvellous. It comes to men, when they once 
love, as something they never knew or heard of 
before. God is marvellous. The birth of Christ is 



A Song of Freedom. 129 

marvellous as it was to the shepherds of old. 
The call of God from heaven to men to leave off 
wrong-doing at once, and to love God with all their 
heart and mind and soul and strength, to enter in- 
stantly into His kingdom and begin to enjoy the 
new life therein, to begin to be good as God is 
good, is a shock to men's preconceived ideas and 
habits, which a proud and slow heart, and often an 
utterly selfish life, have generated. 

If there were no evil the race would be once 
more in Eden to keep and till the Lord's garden, 
and so would every man. This truth of the for- 
f the soul of all its sins and the freedom 
of eternal life in God's dear Son, was once to the 
formalized Jews a stumbling block and to the 
intellectual Greeks foolishness, and it seems to me 

netimes, that there is need in this Christian age 
and land to preach again the simple doctrine of 

::fication by faith, because we are all naturally 
rationalists, and wish to be saved by theory rather 
than by love. We obey because we fear to dis- 
obev. We Eire saved because we are too crood not 
to be. We wish to make it even. We will not be 
beholden to love. 

But this is more and more comprehended in 
that pure and blessed realm where God's nature is 
the theme of loving and joyful contemplation; and 
this is that free element of the kingdom of God 

9 



1 30 Sermons. 



which all the eternities cannot make old, since 
what is of God and of His will and His love, has 
in it the principle of eternal life, and forms the 
ever new song of celestial spirits, for 

"All we do know 
Of what the blessed do above 
Is that they sing and that they love." 



VIII. 



Cfjc f olb of Christ, 



VIII. 

THE FOLD OF CHRIST. 

And there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. — John x. 16. 

THE shepherd and the fold are sacred images 
running through all the holy books ; and 
aside from the Bible, how many soothing allu- 
sions are there in literature and life to the idea 
of the shepherd and his flock ! Shakspeare 
says, — 

" Look, the unfolding star calls up the shepherd," 

and we seem to see the rosy morning light paint- 
ing out the stars, and brightening the hills and 
vales of a dark world, bringing new life, hope, and 
joy to men. How affectingly has the custom of 
the Alpine shepherd been employed to signify spir- 
itual things, that as he can win the sheep to climb 
the tremendous mountain precipices to find the 
sweet, green, hidden pasturage, only by taking 
their lambs in his arms and carrying them up first, 
— so the good Lord sometimes takes the children 
up to Himself, that He may draw the souls of their 
parents away from earth to heaven ! A sick man 



1 34 Sermons. 



once told me that in his long illness he had 
frequently repeated to himself the Twenty-third 
Psalm, beginning, " The Lord is my shepherd; 
I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in 
green pastures : he leadeth me beside the still 
waters. He restoreth my soul." And during the 
days and nights of burning fever, when his tongue 
clove to the roof of his mouth, the words of this 
Psalm were more restoring and strengthening to 
him than medicines to his body. The tenth chap- 
ter of John is Christ's own use of this image, in 
some most tender, profound, and extended lessons. 
He begins by saying, that " He that entereth not 
by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up 
some other way, the same is a thief and a robber," 
— which evidently refers to the ways of men in 
their attempts to come to God, and to external 
religions that pass by the spiritual way which 
Christ pointed out. Soon after, Christ says, " I 
am the door: by me if any man enter in, he 
shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and 
find pasture," — that Christ himself is this means 
of access to God and His kingdom; and if any 
man enter through him, the door, by repentance 
and faith, he shall be saved. The Lord then 
changes the imagery somewhat, and says, " I am 
the good shepherd ; " and adds, in feeling allu- 
sion to the way in which he gives himself to man 



The Fold of Christ. 135 

through his self-sacrificing life and death, " the 
good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep ; " that 
his death was the method of imparting new spir- 
itual life to a sinful world. He then speaks of the 
loving relationship that exists between himself 
and his people, so different from that of the hire- 
ling and his flock: " The hireling fleeth, because 
he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I 
am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and 
am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, 
even so know I the Father: and I lay down my 
life for the sheep." And not for these sheep 
only, — these Jewish believers and followers, — 
but for myriads unborn of all nations, peoples, 
and tongues: " And other sheep I have, which 
are not of this fold : them also I must bring, 
and they shall hear my voice, and there shall 
be one fold, and one shepherd." These are far- 
reaching words, and we are reminded of what 
Thomas Carlvle, rou^h cynic though he be, says 
of Christ's words: "The most wonderful words 
I have heard of being uttered bv man are those 
in the Four Evangelists, by Jesus Christ of Naza- 
reth. Their intellectual talent is hardly inferior 
to their moral. They blend religion and poetry." 
He could have added Christ's own testimony to 
the higher import of his sayings: "My words, 
they are spirit and they are life." They not 



136 Sermons. 



only have intellectual beauty, but spiritual power. 
" There shall be one fold, and one shepherd" We 
might forget what these words definitely teach, in 
dwelling upon the reposeful, prophetic, and sub- 
lime conception they bring before the mind; and 
it would be a kindling theme for the imagination 
to picture that assembling-place where all who 
love the Lord, out of every earthly kingdom, and 
from the deadly conflicts of the world, are brought 
together; where the powerful mind and burning 
heart meet; where the martyrs, thinkers, doers 
of the faith, the heroes who have made the world 
tremble with their lofty victories over error, and 
the meek, suffering disciples, who have sown love 
and peace along lowlier paths, are gathered to 
know as they are known ; who are known of Christ 
himself as belonging to him, for Christ opened 
this heaven, and " brought life and immortality to 
light." But these words, " There shall be one fold, 
and one shepherd," have an immediate and pres- 
ent application; for they comprehend the truth 
of the existence of the kingdom of God upon 
earth, since eternal life exists where God is, and 
" eternal " means that which is of the essence of 
the divine, from which the limitations of time, 
space, and place are absolutely excluded ; and 
this kingdom of God, this fold of Christ on earth, 
is or should be represented, with all its imperfec- 



The Fold of Christ. 137 

tions, by the church, — by those who have come 
into the divine life and into the circle of living 
which is pervaded by the divine spirit. There are 
those, it is true, who are out of the visible church, 
who are yet of the fold ; and there are those in 
the church who do not belong to the spiritual 
fold and have climbed up some other way, and 
in heart are thieves and robbers, who make gain 
of godliness ; but the church, of all earthly soci- 
eties, embodies this spiritual truth of u one fold 
and one shepherd." Not that there is an infalli- 
ble church that contains an infallible doctrine, but 
that the true church founded on Christ and his 
apostles is a community drawn out from the world, 
who, whether visible or invisible, have, by faith 
and love, come into the essential truth and spirit 
of Christ, and received a new life from him ; and 
they are conscious of this new life, so that by 
their Christlike living they confess him before 
men. Even then on earth, in the church, this 
peaceful and glorious truth of " one fold and one 
shepherd " may be realized, and it implies many 
distinct and encouraging truths that are profitable 
to contemplate. 

I would try to preach a simple and Biblical ser- 
mon, carrying out the natural figure of the text 
without abstractions, and keeping in view the beau- 
tiful symbol of the pastoral life as even now seen 



138 Sermons. 



in the East, and in Spain, France, Scotland, Eng- 
land, and the rocky sheep-rearing parts of our 
green New England. 

The fold of Christ's church evidently implies, 
first of all — unity. There is the coming together 
of many in one. The text is rendered in the 
" Revised Version " in a still more compact form, 
" They shall become one flock, one shepherd," 
signifying the truth of a drawing into one of all 
who have experienced the same life, and who rest 
their hope on the same object of faith. There 
must be, necessarily, a unity of the faith, or one 
divine religion, which applies to all men, if in- 
deed they are created by Him who is the One 
only and true God, and if the religion be also 
divine as coming from Him, and as being the 
expression of His will. If there is one God, there 
is one religion. We have a right to infer that 
He who made one law of attraction to rule the 
infinitely complex movements of His physical uni- 
verse — to controul the pathway of the planet Nep- 
tune as it is thrilled by the perturbations of Saturn 
— would make one law of spiritual movement, 
harmony, and redemption, governing all possible 
relations and existences of His spiritual creation ; 
and this simplicity of faith — the love that makes 
all one — distinguishes the divine religion of Christ 
from human religions. 



The Fold of Christ. 139 

The life and crlorv of human religions lie in the 

'mplied assertion that there are as many kinds of 
>elief as there are minds ; that the same faith for 
£1 minds is impossible and therefore unessential ; 
aid that every man should have the largest lib- 
ety in following his own way of salvation and 
oimoral perfection. This is the earnest claim of 
thte religions ; from which the corollary is that 
evey person should have his own religion, and 
praVise his own theory of coming to God and 
eter^l life. Politically this is true ; but spirit- 
ually it is untrue. We have Buddhists in the 
land,vho have a perfect right to be here, but 
they epect to enter heaven through Buddha and 
not though Christ. In contrast to this many- 
sided V\y, we meet the words of Christ, t4 And 
there sril be one fold, and one shepherd." There 
shall not* e an everlastingly unsettled diversity of 
faiths accfding to men's own capricious wills, but 
one divine a ith; or there shall be in the things of 
the spirit c eS sential unity among all who are em- 
braced in e divine fold. There may be many 
paths leadir. up to this fold, but there is one fold, 
and there is ie *< shepherd and bishop of souls " 
whose voice I sheep hear in their hearts through 
and above thV>nfusing voices of the world. II is 
love makes th\ one> not by a divine decree, but 
by a divine po r anc j i;f e WO rking in them. All 



140 Sermons. 



are united in the love of God. His one spirit is 
seen in them ; and wherever the spirit of divisior 
enters, there the human element makes its appear 
ance, — the element of selfishness, of the pride <f 
opinion, and human will. The church is foundd 
on the principle of union, not of separation; aid 
the numerous sects into which the church is spit, 
each distinct and independent, make it in s<me 
respects more like a prison than a fold. Andyet 
while one, the faith of the church has varied'ela- 
tions in its teaching and application of thecruth 
to many minds, for " where the spirit of thfLord 
is there is liberty," and the selfhood of eac" mind 
is inviolate ; but I point simply to the fact-hat all 
who belong to this fold are one in faitlvowever 
variously they clothe it in terms, and with marked 
diversity often in various times and la^ s > as in 
ancient times or in heathen lands (for t 1 spirit of 
Christ works in hearts w r here there i.^ knowl- 
edge of his revelation in the Scriptur) \ and he 
has his children in unchristianized awell as so- 
called Christian countries, and these 1 have come 
into the same faith, have drunk :o the same 
love, have passed through the sar spiritual ex- 
perience, have had the sinful, penitent heart 
taken from them, and have been iade righteous 
men by the divine power of C ist whether he 
is known or unknown, and tK belong to his 



The Fold of Christ. 141 

church, receiving of one spirit and one life, — 
" one Lord, one faith, one baptism." 

Respecting the unity of the church of which 
we are now speaking, there is another word of 
Christ, of still higher import, that we cannot 
now comprehend, and that Christians must wait to 
comprehend hereafter, — it is his prayer that, " All 
may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in 
thee, that they also may be one in us." Uniting 
himself by his incarnation to humanity, Christ 
draws humanity into a participation of the divine ; 
and by virtue of the Son's exaltation, and the 
unity of believers in him, there is opened a view 
of the perfection of the soul caught up with 
Christ into the will, the glory, and the very nature 
of God, — but the light here grows over strong for 
mortal eye, and the best and holiest stand like the 
simple disciples under the blue of the Syrian sky, 
when they were assembled for the last time before 
they were scattered abroad like sheep without a 
shepherd, yet feeling in their hearts the glow of a 
divine love, and " gazing up into heaven." 

The fold of Christ's church implies, again, 
safety. Those who belong to the fold of Christ 
are eternally safe from what can harm or destroy 
the spirit: " By me if any man enter in he shall 
be saved." The first idea of a fold, which, in the 
Orient, is a large inwalled area, open to the sky 



14 2 Sermons, 



but shut off from the robber and the beast of 
prey, is that of security. The painter Millet's 
well-known picture of the " Sheepfold by moon- 
light " is wonderfully suggestive of the idea of 
protecting care amid the vague and wild immen- 
sity of the universe. Salvation is written over the 
low door. The walls about the sheepfold are the 
arms of divine love. " My sheep hear my voice, 
and they follow me ; and I give unto them eternal 
life ; and they shall never perish, neither shall any 
man pluck them out of my hand." Men con- 
scious of their sin, like the jailer of Philippi, who 
see that life is short and that an untried eternity 
will soon break upon them, while, it may be, some 
earthquake of power or calamity is rocking about 
them, do not care so much for minor questions, 
but they cry from the deeps, " What must I do 
to be saved?" This is the natural cry of the 
awakened spirit: "How can I, with sin in my 
life and in my heart, come to the infinitely Pure, 
and have the arms of fatherly forgiveness thrown 
around me, and know that I am His? Who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death? You may 
settle your theological disputes as you please, but 
my soul searches for the way to the living God 
and His salvation. Tell me where I can find it." 
Can, indeed, any human word stand for a moment, 
in firm inspiring trust and hope, compared with 



The Fold of Christ, 143 

the answer which is given in the Word of God: 
11 He is able also to save them to the uttermost 
that come unto God by him, seeing that he ever 
liveth to make intercession for them." Christ, the 
manifestation of divine mercy, is the open door 
of the sheepfold wherein is perfect salvation from 
: . ndemnation and power of sin which he has 
--rcome; from the power of death, because they 
that are Christ's shall rise with him into new spir- 
itual life; from the power of even-thing that can 
hurt the soul. "Who shall separate us from the 
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or 
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or 
sword? As it is written. For thy sake are we 
killed all the dav lon^ ; we are accounted as 
sheep for the slaughter. Xay, in all these things 
we are more than conquerors through him that 
loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, 
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, 
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God, which is in 
Ch: sus our Lord." 

The fold of Christ's church implies also rest 
and peace. " There shall be one fold and one 
shepherd." These words seem to breathe a di- 
vine peace. The spirit seeking peace shall be 
everlastingly folded. Not many folds, not many 



144 Sermons. 



shepherds, is the distracting thought of the soul, 
— pulling it here, and pulling it there, — but one 
fold and one shepherd. Many persons — show- 
ing how unbased and all afloat are their religious 
beliefs — are in a chaotic state of mind, although 
living in later days of Christian faith. Old 
faiths have crumbled, and new faiths are found 
insufficient. They go from teacher to teacher; 
they gather only more doubt and more distress 
from arguments, books, and men's sayings; they 
change the place, and not the pain. The vague 
sense of not finding the true cure of human sin 
creates this unhappy condition ; and blessed is it, 
if at this point the peaceful fold of Jesus is pre- 
sented to the eye as a city set on a hill. There, 
the sinful will yielded, and the spirit reconciled 
to the Father through the Son, it finds peace. 
There is " peace in believing," — not in thinking, 
feeling, giving, or doing. " Therefore, being justi- 
fied by faith, we have peace with God, through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." There is an immediate, 
profound, and real rest for the soul in leaving all 
that perpetually fails it, and trusting the divine 
Word, the divine Work, the divine Love, and 
being folded forever in Christ. Coming up out 
of the low, narrow enclosures of men, continu- 
ally varying, broken down and invaded, the soul 
enters into the one high, firm, and peaceful fold 



The Fold of Christ. 145 

of God, above life's storms, and there is everlast- 
ing rest. " The kingdom of God is joy and 
peace." The shepherd who stands in the midst 
of the fold says, " My peace I give unto you ; not 
as the world giveth give I unto you ; let not your 
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." 

The fold of Christ's church implies, once more, 
the supply of all wants. " By me if any man 
enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and 
out and find pasture." The human mind is won- 
derful in its infinite desires. It has wants which 
the world cannot meet; it hungers and thirsts 
after righteousness, and there is nourishment for 
those wants in the fold of Christ. There is a 
Shepherd who knows his sheep, and has called 
them by name, and who understands their indi- 
vidual needs, and can lead them into the heav- 
enly pastures. God Himself shall feed them. In 
Christ is the perfection of our humanity, and 
we are made complete in Him. We are, indeed, 
commanded to be perfect as God is perfect, and 
believers are forbidden no good thing; for all 
things minister to their power and good, and 
they are led by the Spirit deeper and deeper into 
truth; and the fold of the church is the place 
appointed for their instruction in righteousness 
and their nourishment in divine things. Perpetual 
growth is the law of their spiritual life: "I am 

10 



1 46 Sermons, 



come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly." Christians are 
not kept back from anything that serves to nurture 
the whole man and to develop all his powers, — 
whatever is true, pure, beautiful, and good, — 
knowledge, science, art, thought, happiness, joy, 
and life, everything that is manifested of God. 
Nature, rightly read, is an outward symbol of the 
Divine Love and Beauty, and the earth is full of 
the beauty of the Lord to those who have the 
open eye to see the divine perfection. They are 
stimulated to seek and ask. They are conducted 
by the Good Shepherd beside the living waters 
of everlasting truth, and up the heights of divine 
wisdom ; and still there are higher fields and 
greener spots and more hidden pastures far up 
the mountain of God. 

The fold of Christ's church implies, yet again, 
fellowship or communion. How many times in 
Palestine and in Spain I have seen a shepherd 
going on with free strides before his flock, not 
driving them, but they following him in a com- 
pact body as if they loved him, — as if they were 
drawn along by a cord fastened in their hearts ! 
Christ's heart was a heart of love. He purposed 
to rear on the earth a human brotherhood, a 
society, pervaded by his own loving spirit, which 
should be the nursery of the world's higher train- 



The Fold of Christ. 147 

ing and spiritual reformation. He therefore does 
not allow his disciples to live a separate and unlov- 
ing life, neither does he require them to live an 
ascetic life, but rather one of " sweet reason- 
ableness " and of affectionate communion in all 
its relations with other men. Religion is not all 
of the head, but it is also of the heart. Love is 
not an intellectual faculty to be reasoned upon, 
but it is a feeling which expresses itself in true 
sympathy, — in sorrowing in others' sorrows and 
rejoicing in their joys, showing a brother's heart 
to men and acting the ready friend to aid them 
in their difficulties, and to assist them over the 
hard places of life to a better life here and be- 
yond. And, above all, there should be this 
fellowship in the church ; for Christians are not 
permitted to live away from the common table 
and the common altar, " If we walk in the light, 
we have fellowship one with another, and the 
blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from 
all sins." And what a high fellowship ! These 
are they, if there be any on earth, who form one 
loving brotherhood. They may be independent 
in original characteristics, like the gnarled oak 
that grows on the mountain; but their hearts are 
one. They flow into each other. The bond of 
a true society runs through them, and that is love. 
This bond of brotherly Christian union, Neander 



1 48 Sermons. 



tells us, was supposed by the ancient Romans to 
be a secret compact, which the police tried in 
vain to discover; neither can the worldly mind or 
worldly sagacity fathom it now, — for the church 
of Christ have one uniting object of confidence 
and affection which is hid from the world, made 
blind by reason of its unbelief. " So we being 
many are one body in Christ, and every one 
members one of another," — a union which grows 
more and more perfect, like the unity of an ex- 
panding and well-knit body by an in-working law 
of life. The true church of Christ is the only 
successful and perfectly united society upon the 
earth, since its differences are human and tempo- 
rary, while its union is divine and eternal. 

The fold of Christ implies, lastly, training for 
service. " And when he putteth forth his own 
sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow 
him, and they know his voice." There is every- 
thing in the words, 4< and the sheep follow him." 
They follow him in his life of pure goodness, 
since Christianity, in its essence, is goodness, — 
goodness of spirit, goodness of action, goodness 
of life. Christ leads man away from all unright- 
eousness and into every good activity, — into the 
enlarged subdual of their evil lusts and the fulness 
of the obedience and service of God. Christ trains 
his followers to be like himself, and would have 



The Fold of Chi'ist. 149 

his church carry on his work. He has a service 
for each and all to do, and to do it through their 
united effort. They that come into his fold must 
serve him unreservedly; for he leads over rough 
and (without him) inaccessible paths. It is not 
merely for salvation, but for action, he calls his 
own out of the world. Now his kingdom is a fold, 
and now a vineyard. It is a fold for the supply 
of divine strength, and a vineyard for the putting 
forth of human energy. He who follows Christ is 
continually striving for the better service of God, 
is ever going about doing good, and delivering all 
world-entangled souls, and delivering his own soul 
by so doing. As is the shepherd so are the sheep. 
As the Shepherd laid down his life for others, — 
for those even who hated him, — so his disciples 
should have the unselfish spirit that is willing to 
lay down life for others. The altruistic philoso- 
phy of the day is sometimes claimed as a new and 
extraordinary discovery, the last and greatest in 
ethics, but what there is true in it is at least as old 
as Christianity, whose principle is, " not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister; " and no one is 
rightfully in the fold who does not, in some sense, 
even if his faith be small, partake of that self- 
sacrificing spirit that was the Master's. This is 
the sign of discipleship : " Pure religion and un- 
defiled before God and the Father is this, To visit 



1 50 Sermons. 



the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and 
to keep himself unspotted from the world." The 
lesson which every Christian has learned who has 
felt the power of Christ as a vital principle, is the 
willing, loving, entire sacrifice of self for the good, 
and eternal good, of others. It needed not even 
Thomas a Kempis to say, " Everything for the 
love of God," comprehending in this love of God 
also the love of man and the disposition to give 
up everything for others ; for this was first enun- 
ciated by Christ, and came from him as its source. 

Welcome those who desire to enter the fold of 
Christ from the world ! Welcome to the peaceful 
home, the abundant provision, the happy society, 
the loving service, the pure joys, of the spiritual 
fold of Jesus ! Welcome to a substantial peace 
and a real salvation, — a salvation in spirit, char- 
acter, and life ! Remember that you are saved 
by Christ from all unrighteousness ; therefore con- 
tend against every evil desire to the last moment ! 
Remember that your rest is not in ease, but in 
believing, loving, and serving. Never forget him 
who nourishes the spirit in good, nor be ashamed 
of the Shepherd who gave himself for you that 
you might live to him. Never so rejoice as when 
you can do or bear anything for him. Strive to 
" know him, and the power of his resurrection, 
and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made 



The Fold of Christ. 151 

conformable unto his death ; " and hearing his 
voice bidding you " come up higher," stay not 
starving and pining in the low places, but rise into 
the higher life, the larger fields of joy and service, 
the perfect salvation ; and so truly know Christ 
that you may come at length into his heavenly 
fold, his presence, light, and love, and with all 
God's children through eternity " there shall be 
one fold and one Shepherd ! " 



IX. 
Stotic of an ®n$tm ibatoiour. 



IX. 

LOVE OF AN UNSEEN SAVIOUR. 

Whom not having seen, ye love. — i Peter i. 8, part of verse. 

OVE is fed by the imagination, and thrives 
-*-' even in absence. We may get some faint 
conception of the soul's power of loving what is 
not seen, when one to whom we were bound by 
every tie and who was worthy of our best affec- 
tion has been taken from us by death and passes 
into the unseen world ; and, when we have nothing 
sensible to dwell upon, no line or feature, we begin 
to see, — indistinctly at first, but soon more clearly, 
— the character of the friend purified of earthly 
imperfections and fixed in the spiritual sphere ; 
we see the real man ; he rises before us clothed 
in immortal beauty, and we love him with pure, 
unselfish love. You say that this is the work 
of the imagination, of that representative faculty 
by which we view unseen things as real when 
prompted and stirred by the affections. It may 
be so ; and truly the example is by no means 
a parallel one to that presented in the apostle's 



156 Sermons. 



words applied to the risen Saviour, "whom not 
having seen, ye love ; " for not only is the divine 
here distinguished from the human, but, unlike 
the disciple Peter, who writes of loving an unseen 
Lord, the believer to whom he writes, and the be- 
liever now, has never seen Christ " in the flesh," 
nor known the personal magnetism of his pres- 
ence ; and before he has seen him, yet believing, 
he loves him with unbounded affection. 

Let me say, in order to guard against misappre- 
hension, that although since Christ has withdrawn 
his bodily presence and ascended to heaven we 
are called upon to love an unseen Saviour, yet 
it is not by a blind faith. If faith do not require 
sight, it does not by any means deny sight. There 
is nothing in Christian faith which contemns proof 
addressed to reason ; for if we ourselves have not 
seen Christ in the flesh, others have seen him and 
testified of him, and no one impugns their testi- 
mony. The life of Christ belongs to history. The 
historical proof concerning Jesus, who lived at the 
meeting-point of the three great civilizations, the 
Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and in the well-known 
period of the beginnings of the Roman Empire, 
which to some minds is a strong proof (everything 
at the present day being looked at from an historic 
point of view), it surely behooves a thoughtful 
man to weigh it; for let opponents of Christian- 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 157 

ity say what they will, they have to account 
for Christianity itself, and what it has wrought in 
the race's civilization ; and which already 

" Has cast the kingdoms old 
Into another mould." 

But the argument of Christianity is not historic, or 
the establishing of a fact; neither is it philosophic, 
whose theoretic statement is a matter of opinion 
and capable of being demonstrated by reasoning; 
but it is rather vital and cumulative, it is a life 
that has progress not to be closed until the human 
race has ceased. It is the life of God in the soul 
of man. Is it, then, incapable of proof? Per- 
haps so ! if moral and spiritual truth cannot be 
proved. The burden of proof, however, lies upon 
its assailant, since Christianity is not a theology 
whose verification is the object of reasoning, for 
it does not need reasoning to know God or love 
Him ; nor does Christianity arrogate to itself phi- 
losophic unity; but, in the words of its Founder, 
it points to its results, — " the tree is known by 
its fruits ; " and when these w r ords were said they 
did not have in a human point of view the force 
they now have, because what then was potential is 
now real. 

In Christian faith there is, indeed, proof for 
head and heart, though the form in which intel- 



158 Sermons. 



lectual evidence presents itself varies. We have, 
in this age, moved away from the dialectic meth- 
ods of the Reformation, and from the style of dia- 
lectic argumentation that, in the last two centu- 
ries, tried severely the reasoning powers. Pascal's 
" almost hatred of reason M would not now be re- 
quired ; nor do questions such as the good Bishop 
of Natal has more recently raised, trouble us ; but 
the Christian evidence, or much of it, is, never- 
theless, a strong kind of proof, though it differs 
from common proof concerning common things. 
It is not the same that we apply to the solution 
of a scientific problem, or a question of political 
economy. It is a higher kind of testimony. It 
rises from the material to the moral, and ad- 
dresses us chiefly upon the moral side of the 
nature ; which also must be opened to receive it, 
since the knowledge of God depends upon the 
state of the heart, and divine truth cannot be 
comprehended without a preparation that brings 
the mind into moral union with the truth. If a 
man with ever so acute mind, as David Friedrich 
Strauss, chooses to see myths, he will see them; 
and nothing but these shadowy forms will fill his 
mental vision, obscuring the form of the Son of 
God. And if we really prefer to dwell in this twi- 
light when the sun is up, we are at liberty to do so. 
The evidences of Christ's risen life, filling heaven 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 159 

with its light and earth with its fruit, are as mani- 
fest as the sun, and its warmth is felt by all souls 
who open themselves to receive it ! Men who 
must have a higher life, and who " hunger and 
thirst after righteousness " find in Christ the 
bringer of this divine life. His renovating influ- 
ences correspond to their wants : and there is the 
highest reason in that (however any of us may fail 
to comprehend it) which supplies the demands of 
the spiritual nature. Christ meets these demands 
of our nature, which is the strongest argument that 
can be addressed to a rational being, who asks for 
no dramatic Saviour, but for one who has the key 
of life and death, and can unlock the massive prob- 
lems of evil, and redemption, and the future life, 
against which the mind in its agony beats itself. 
Men have to face the fact of their moral imperfec- 
tion. With a nature that requires perfection they 
cry out for some light-bearer to guide and deliver 
them, — who, above Nature, can bring into their na- 
ture a new force and purity, and at the same time, 
by union with them, constitutes himself a human 
brother and awakes sympathy as an object to be 
loved ; for every human heart must have such a 
higher object to love, and he who can fill it is no 
unreal Saviour, though unseen. 

This spiritual Saviour, thus demanded by our 
soul's necessities, is set before us in the divine 



1 60 Sermons. 



word ; and of this word, even of its preparatory 
and more ancient portion, the Old Testament, 
poor Heinrich Heine, tossing on a bed of pain, 
and at times titanically audacious in his impiety, 
said: " Vain words, vain tests of all human judg- 
ment. It is God's work like a tree, like a flower, 
like the sea, like man himself; it is the word of 
God, that and no more." 

The manner in which this word, or testimony 
and testament of Christ, came into being, is as 
simple as the light when it dawns out of the night, 
and yet as mysterious and profound. Plain men, 
who drew nets and worked with their hands to 
gain their livelihood, without consulting with one 
another, without acting upon a concerted plan, 
collected together and wrote down for the instruc- 
tion of other disciples as humble as themselves, 
what they saw of Jesus of Nazareth, what they re- 
membered of his words and acts every day while 
they were with him on earth, — at the marriage 
feast of Cana and the burial of Bethany, in Judea 
and Galilee, in the country among the vineyards 
and cornfields, in the fishing-boat and by the 
shore of the inland sea, in the surging ocean of 
the great metropolis, in civil scenes and at the 
private board, in hours of joy and of sorrow, in 
life and death, — and putting these together we 
have the portrait of a true yet unique, yes, perfect 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 161 

man. 1 Never was such a one before or since por- 
trayed. They did it, simply, because they had the 
perfect model to copy; the Greek sculptor made 
the perfect statue, which we wonder at but cannot 
equal, because he had the Greek form, developed 
by athletic discipline, before him. They also un- 
consciously painted the halo of divinity about the 
head of this humble but perfect man ; it shot forth 
irresistible rays of Godhead, and they who saw 
Him saw the Father; they who heard Him heard 
the Father. 

It is delightful, after reading the Scriptures with 
earnest attention and communing with the word 
and truth of Christ, to find that in our own spirit 
his claims are felt to be true. We have an inner 
proof, affirming and even rising beyond the out- 
ward testimony, which seems like a ladder set up 
against the sky. an instrumentality bv which we 

1 Shellev. notwithstanding the immense errors of his life and 
opinions, was impressed, as a man of genius must be. by the 
character of Christ. His biographer makes him say: "Christ 
appears the most important of all religious teachers, abiding in 
closest harmony with that Spirit of energy and wisdom which is 
the ruling power of the universe ; a poet and a thinker, inter- 
preting to us the highest truths ; the enemy of falsehood and op- 
pression ; of meek and majestic demeanour; calm in danger; of 
natural and simple habits ; beloved to adoration bv his adherents ; 
unmoved, solemn, and severe ; yet gentle and benign." How 
much further would he have to go to say — perfect. Some who 
doubt seem hardly to realize that fallible men can testify of the 
perfect when they tell the simple truth about it. 

ii 



1 62 Sermons. 



have climbed to a heavenly truth, and then the 
truth itself fills our hearts, and bears witness by its 
own joyful reality. This inward witness leads 
further and higher than that of the written record. 
It leads us to the true friend of the soul, the in- 
visible source of life and light, the human brother 
but divine Lord, the Beloved, the Adored ! 

I have often thought it must have been this 
Christian consciousness which was the secret power 
that supported the early church amid its incredible 
trials in planting the Christian faith. They were 
conscious of a new divine light within them, of a 
new divine strength that led them on, and that 
Jesus himself was always with them and in them, 
just as he promised he would be, even to the end 
of the world. 

While thus we love him with the best love of 
our hearts, we also confidently trust him in what 
he claims concerning himself, and we recognize 
him in his varied and glorious offices. We see 
him especially '(because that touches our human- 
ity) as Saviour, as one who for the great love he 
bore us incarnated himself in our nature and died 
for us, and rose again for our eternal life. We do 
not need repeated argument to establish this af- 
fecting truth, that makes its appeal to the needs 
and affections of the soul. Are we to be thrust- 
ing the spear into the bleeding side to prove that 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 163 

he died for our sins? Are we to be feeling around 
in the empty sepulchre to discover that he rose 
from it? If such a being had power to lay down 
his life he had power to take it again, and he has 
risen. He was before in little Judea; now by his 
spirit he is in the whole world. This rough world 
feels the softening effect of his spiritual presence. 
It breathes in every good influence, and energizes 
every good act. Hid from the proud and unre- 
ceptive, meek and loving hearts know He is here. 
He is an ever-present, gracious, and powerful Sa- 
viour to every tempted soul that puts its trust in 
him, and is just such a One as the disappointed 
and famishing affections of a nature made for God's 
love, may lay hold of with everlasting love. 

I would remark that the love of an unseen Sa- 
viour shows the beginnings of true nobility of 
character. It plants a conception of Perfect Beauty 
in the mind. It regards Goodness in the idea, de- 
prived of external form. It kills selfishness, which 
is the mean and little thing about a man. Faith 
must be the great act of the mind, if it is, as Dr. 
Arnold of Rugby says of it, " a preference of un- 
seen good to what seems good at the moment." 
This demands the heroism of self-sacrifice, it de- 
mands in some sense a spurning of this life to win 
a better. There can be nothing great without a 
spark of faith. There is no originality in a scien- 



1 64 Sermons. 



tific man who does not trust, whose mind does not 
throw itself upon the bolder hypothesis. 

In religious things the mind may have proof, 
but faith is the uncalculating act that hazards all 
upon a venture of love. How many there are 
among us of whom it might be said, " they had 
every other gift but wanted love ; " and until love 
is awaked, a man lies in the lowness and narrow- 
ness of a sensual nature ; for, as love is the nature 
of God, so it is of His children, and this is the in- 
fallible criterion. This spirit of love, which is the 
spirit of Christ the Son, which loves God above 
all things, which loves Him infinitely, is more 
easily recognized than described ; but its absence 
is a fatal thing; for the deepest principle of the 
new birth is in the divine quality of the heart. 
Love is the root of righteousness, and while a 
change of moral character is wrought, love is the 
effective principle. 

A man, therefore, should not undertake to prove 
his religion. He need not array reasons for the 
love of God so as to love Him. He who has an 
immortal within him must trust to that which 
speaks to his best reason, his noblest affections, 
— that part of him which responds to and is played 
upon by spiritual influences, which can comprehend 
and love God. In a materialistic age, when all is 
brought to a scientific test, religion catches the 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 165 

infection, and the most spiritual thing that is, de- 
nies its nature, and strives, like science (which, ir. 
its place, I honour as highly as any one), for a dis- 
play of material proof, forgetting the spiritual tes- 
timony of faith which is " the evidence of things 
not seen." " We are saved by hope, but hope 
that is seen is not hope." God's love to our 
souls is revealed in His Son, who is the Spirit 
of God working in us, who is the Divine Good 
dwelling in our souls; and if we do not respond 
to this divine love, and put our loving confi- 
dence in this spiritual Saviour, above the thoughts 
or proofs of the logical understanding, what else 
can fill our hearts, can stir their depths and call 
forth their abiding faith? " Blessed are they that 
have not seen and yet have believed." These 
form an elect and blessed company who have 
ventured their all upon the Lord, and who have 
yielded to love alone, which is the most generous 
motive that can move natures and which allies us 
to the divine. They are the children of God by 
faith, who have not required of God such proof as 
could not and should not be given; who have 
broken down walls ; who have taken heaven by 
violence; who have pierced through and known 
the divine Redeemer amid the obscurations, sor- 
rows, and sufferings of His human nature; who 
have loved where they have not seen ! 



1 66 Sermons. 



I would desire, especially, to convey to you, 
Christian brethren, and to myself, the friendly 
exhortation that believers, those who live in the 
faith and love of the Lord, and are led by his 
presence, should strive ever to abide in the circle 
of His spiritual strength, and not to sink back into 
the sensual sphere. They should keep their hope 
pure. This is their glorious distinction that they 
love an unseen Saviour. They alone among mor- 
tals have had the higher reason and the spirit- 
ual instinct to do this. The Invisible One gives 
them eternal life. He floods their inner nature 
with his divine presence. But when Christians, 
who are the children of God by faith, bar their 
minds to the influences of God's love, and be- 
come self-dependent, and strive for holiness by 
hard ways, — by the labour-and-wage system and 
by what they themselves can do and are, — and 
grow suspicious in their religious life, and con- 
tinually demand evidence of things unseen that 
are eternal and cannot be projected into time, and 
live on the husks of human arguments, and re- 
quire clearer light on this doctrine, and shrink 
from that duty until they see the way brighter, 
and, like the Pharisee and Levite, shut up their 
compassions against their suffering fellow-men 
wherever found, whether in their own station of 
life or the " slums " of a great city, because they 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 167 

are not quite sure of the ground they tread upon, 
and are jealous even of a brother Christian, and 
will not join hands with him in work and fellowship 
because he belongs to another ecclesiastical camp, 
— they are walking by sight, or, rather, are going 
down into the emptiness of the tomb from which 
Christ has risen, and groping in it. They are 
plunging back into foulness and darkness and 
death. They are forsaking the simplicity of the 
gospel. They are leaving the lofty pathway of 
life, and faith, and love. 

When, too, we see Christian disciples running 
invariably to books and human teachers to help 
them in their doubts and difficulties, then we may 
be sure they are beginning to walk by sight; they 
are leaving prayer; they are deserting the foun- 
tain of living waters and hewing out for themselves 
with bone-shattering labour cisterns that hold no 
water; they are no more led by the Spirit; they 
are not simply trusting and loving an unseen 
Saviour, and walking in the light that streams 
from His inner glory. Men, who are seen, are 
not to be authoritative teachers, are not to be 
objects of supreme love and confidence. How 
poor such guides ! Christ, who is unseen, and 
who perfectly knows and loves us, is the only 
Master that can be implicitly followed. 

When Christians are becoming faint-hearted, 



1 68 Sermons. 



and are sinking under their conflicts and sorrows, 
as half-drowned men are submerged effortless and 
lifeless beneath the waves, and are losing the great 
hope of living for God in this life, then they are 
living by sight, they are leaving the love of Christ 
on which they should rest, and to which they 
should cling with deathless grasp. 

But it may be asked earnestly by those who 
desire, above all things, to know the truth, how 
we can best show our love to an unseen Lord and 
Friend? It is a difficult matter and beyond human 
strength to be loving that which we cannot see, 
to be worshipping and straining after some unat- 
tained ideal. It is like searching through many 
lands, as did the knights of old, for the " Holy 
Grail." It is pursuing some supernal form of 
beauty too pure for sinful eye to behold or hand 
to touch. But, I reply, we can see Him so long- 
as we have true faith. " Blessed are the pure in 
heart for they shall see God." We can have a 
sight of Him by that inner spiritual eye that looks 
clearly into the divine. We cannot, indeed, show 
our love to the unseen Saviour, simply by talk- 
ing, or writing, or preaching fine things about it. 
" Words are the daughters of earth, but things 
are the sons of God." Most Christians are, per- 
haps, inclined to this stereotyped sentimentalism 
of expression about Jesus, in song, prayer, letter, 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 169 

book, and conversation, which they do not always 
feel, and which the stern blows of real trial cleave 
off. % This will not lead us beyond the vestibule, 
and it cannot bring into the interior of the temple 
where the King is in his beauty. 

We could not, perhaps, describe in a word how 
one may show his love to his Lord, better than by 
saying that he does this by doing that which 
Christ requires of him, and by living a Christlike 
life. u He that hath my commandments, and 
keepeth them, he it is that loveth me ; and he 
that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and 
I will love him, and will manifest myself to him." 
But in order to obey Christ's commands, it be- 
comes necessary to renounce the love of self and 
to take up the cross that Christ bore before us. 
It is necessary to beat down manfully earthly 
passions; to give up selfish interests; to cast away 
cowardly thoughts and doubts, and to rise above 
the level of the temper and spirit of the world 
into the will of God, and to know that religion is 
goodness, is self-sacrificing goodness drawn from 
the spirit of Christ. How do we know that we 
love Christ? How do we know that we love any 
one? 

We have, indeed, a very good proof that we 
love Christ when it is happiness to deny ourselves 
to do His will, to act in particular cases with a 



1 70 Sermons. 



practical honesty which cuts into our hearts like 
a knife and makes them bleed. We have a tes- 
timony within ourselves that we love the unseen 
Lord, when unholy things grow distasteful, and 
righteousness, truth, and the great things of the 
heavenly life become the peaceful abode of the 
spirit, when He who is our hope fills us with 
the brightness of eternal hope, when the sweet 
peace of God abides in our hearts though around 
this calm inner life roars the wild storm. 

When we are willing to live not so much for 
ourselves, but in others' lives; to love God in 
men; to raise up those who are beneath to our 
level ; to enrich the poor with aid and sympathy ; 
to give to those who can make no return, or at 
least from whom we expect no return ; to abandon 
the worldly principle of caste and to show the 
brother's heart to all, black and white, Jew, 
heathen and Christian, heretic and believer, day- 
labourer and rich man, ignorant and educated, 
disagreeable and pleasant, saint and sinner, those 
who love us not as well as those who love us, — 
not only to live for others but, if need be, to be 
willing to die for others, to lose life, and to do 
this not in the spirit of pride, as if to hand some- 
thing from a higher step down to those on a lower 
step, but in humility, knowing our own imperfec- 
tion, unworthiness, and sin, and in true love and 



Love of an Unseen Saviour. 171 

~~ 
manly sincerity, — then we show that the spirit of 
Christ has somehow passed into us, and His love 
has taken up its dwelling in us. 

This is a love which loves all things in God, and 
feels that all things are filled with God, and that 
His loving spirit dwells in all. This is a faith 
which comes out like gold thrice tried from the 
furnace ; and, even in this life, in the hard things 
we undergo, the unaccountable sorrows and temp- 
tations, the blows, disappointments, tempests of 
change and loss that beat like hail on our heads, 
and when everything outward seems deprived of 
its light, this love lives and sings, for it sees Him 
who is invisible ; it dwells with Him in the depths 
of the soul; it is at peace with Him in His change- 
less peace; it knows an inward joy which is satisfy- 
ing and divine, even as the disciple Peter felt when 
he wrote to i( the strangers " scattered abroad in 
the Pagan provinces of Asia Minor who loved the 
unseen Lord, "That the trial of your faith, be- 
ing much more precious than that of gold that 
perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be 
found unto praise and honour and glory at the 
appearing [manifestation] of Jesus Christ, whom 
not having seen, ye love, in whom, though now 
ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy 
unspeakable and full of glory." 



HOR.£ HOMILETIC-E. 



HOR/E HOMILETIC/E 



I WILL try to answer such questions as are sent to 
me upon the well-worn though great subject of 
preaching, reserving the right to make from them a se- 
lection ; and shall address myself mainly to younger 
preachers and students, not caring or presuming co teach 
older heads ; endeavouring to follow the counsel of a 
clever Athenian in one of Plato's dialogues : " Let him 
carry on the discussion by means of questions and an- 
swers, and not after each question make a long speech 
evading the point at issue, and not troubling himself to 
answer, but rambling on until most of his hearers have 
forgotten what the argument is about." 

Is preaching on morality to be encouraged? 

Assuredly. It is not all, but it forms a valuable 
department of preaching, if, indeed, it be drawn from a 
divine source, and is not a morality which moves on 
a natural plane merely. While Aristotle's ethics have 
hardly been improved upon in their analysis and phi- 
losophy, Christianity added the idea of love, transform- 
ing ethics into religion. But I never like to hear 
morality, for any reason, run down in the pulpit. 
Matthew Arnold, while in some of his utterances he 
declares that there is little probability that God is a 
person who thinks and loves, still conceives of God as 



176 Horcz Homileticcz. 

the Eternal that makes for righteousness, as if this were 
the foundation idea of what is divine. The conception 
of God corresponds to and comprehends the idea of 
right. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of righteousness. 
"The Father hath committed all judgment unto the 
Son." He is the revelation of God, who is the pure, 
the righteous One, in man — in humanity. Ethical 
preaching is setting forth the divine law of righteous- 
ness as applied to human life in all its phases and acts, 
whether outward or inward. It has, like duty, of which 
it treats, two sides to it, God and man These are 
both truly one, and are comprised in the law of love 
which the Saviour proclaimed, and which is the essence 
of the gospel that led to suffering for the good of others. 
Without this ethical element, preaching loses its relation 
to human interests. It is a thing of philosophy. The 
sermon becomes an end, not a means. It is preached 
to be talked of, criticised, and widely reported, — as if 
it were of any importance in itself. The Lord's house 
becomes a temple to man's intellectual glorifying. We 
seem to hear the pointed words of the prophet : " Your 
new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth ; 
they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them. 
And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes 
from you ; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not 
hear ; your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make 
you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before 
mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek 
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
plead for the widow." 

If much of sublimated preaching should be transformed 



Preaching on Morality. 177 

into a preaching that has a human life in it, that beats 
with a human heart, that feels for human wants, that 
seeks men out in their sins, that contends against the 
actual evil in human nature, that comes home to men's 
business and bosoms, it would have a more living power. 
As it is, it often beats the air of vain speculation. It 
winnows logical chaff. It weaves a rhetorical many- 
coloured web in the morning, which it unravels at night. 
If its theology had only a moral basis of divine truth and 
sober earnestness \ if it turned men into the active cur- 
rents of doing good, of destroying (as Christ came into 
the world to do) all the works of the devil, of visiting the 
sick, of wisely aiding the poor, of promoting honesty in 
trade, of purifying politics, of reconstructing the criminal 
classes, of staying the tides of intemperance and prostitu- 
tion in our cities, of carrying light and health into the 
unreclaimed moral wastes in the midst of us, it would be 
more like the gospel first published, — the evangel of 
good will to men. It would bring in the new year of God. 
It would result in the real reform of human society, the 
State and the world. The gospel in its essence is ethical 
and practical. The Bible is a practical book, and is at 
this moment better understood and more intelligently 
interpreted than ever before, being looked at as written, 
not by inspired machines, but by living men, who were 
in the midst of life, and were earnestly seeking how to 
live righteously, as the subjects of God's moral kingdom. 
It meets these questions of conscience and every-day 
living, and is a human as well as a divine book. The 
scope of Christian preaching may be described as sweep- 
ing the whole circumference of humanity, of which God 

12 



178 Horcz Homileticcz. 

himself is the centre. We have now the ugly problem 
of socialistic communism confronting us in America, 
as it does the people of Europe ; communism from a 
selfish point of view. But Christ taught in his gospel a 
communism of all the best interests of humanity in the 
light of the higher law of love, of the centre of commun- 
ion in God ; the inference being direct and irresistible, 
that the great Christian principle of brotherhood is to 
guide us in the most difficult questions which concern 
the common life of our sinful and suffering humanity. 
The true preacher is united to every man by the kinship 
of Christ's renewing love, and suffers with him as a 
brother; he has " an enthusiasm for humanity." Should 
we indeed succeed in secularizing government and secu- 
larizing society, we should then have a system of political 
economy which would be without the gospel in it, which 
would be without the renewing moral element of Christian 
love, and which would be as powerless on all questions of 
political and soical evil, — such as chronic pauperism, 
public licentiousness, tramps, prison discipline, the de- 
graded and criminal classes, — as on questions of com- 
mon morality in business, in neighbourly intercourse, in 
the ordinary affairs of human life and in politics. The 
axiom of civil reform that " politics are morals com- 
prehensively enforced " is a true one. Morality ought to 
be preached from every pulpit in the land, with much 
more clearness and iteration than it is done, and with a 
deeper penetration into the motives of conduct and char- 
acter, or our preaching will become more and more like 
a Sunday song, — pleasant to the ear, and chiming with 
the opera-music at the other end of the church. 



Jesuit and Protestant Methods. 179 

Which is the better system for making preachers : 
the Jesuit, or the Protestant ? 

This is a pregnant question, and cannot be answered 
offhand. It brings two great methods of religious train- 
ing, of training for efficiency in religious achievement — 
the repressive and expressive, if they might be so-called 
— face to face. It is lawful to learn from our enemies. 
The Jesuit seminar)' system is a drastic one. It makes 
strong men. Its pupil (I speak of the best type) aims 
at complete self-renunciation ; he withdraws from the 
world and consecrates himself to God ; his heart cries 
with St. Francis Xavier, u Amplius, amplius — more, O 
Lord, yet more ! " The Jesuit novice, though he may 
have been a rich youth, presents himself to the Superior, 
saying, u I am a poor man come to ask your hospitality. 
I have nothing but myself to offer." He takes the four 
sacred vows of the Jesuit order before the canonical 
time : namely, those of poverty, chastity, obedience, and 
entire submission to the will of the Pope — to stay, do, 
and go, as he may command. He makes haste, as I 
quote from a Jesuit writer, " to go down into the mystic 
tomb, where, as St. Paul expresses it, one must put off 
the old man to put on the new. He disappears as 
though dead ; for ten years the world sees him no more, 
hears not his name, speaks not of him." His seminary 
life is a decade of religious incarceration, where, by deeper 
and deeper steps into that living tomb, the minister that is 
to be becomes, in Jesuit phrase, "perinde cadaver " to 
the world and human joys and affections. His constant 
companion is the " Exercitia Spiritit alia " of St. Ignatius, 
by the study and observance of which he hopes to con- 



i8o Horcz Homileticcz. 

quer every sinful affection and worldly desire. This is a 
book of dry directions, of military rules, with little of 
scriptural language or thought, or even of devotional 
matter ; by the following of whose prescriptions with an 
unreasoning fidelity, and under the supervision of a skilled 
director, the thoughts are forced into one channel ; the 
senses are repressed, as it were extinguished ; the most 
interior operations of the mind are inspected and anno- 
tated ; the gradual recurrence of wrong desires is re- 
duced day by day to a minimum, till one after another 
the evil inclinations of the mind are abolished, and 
the man becomes holy and perfect. So it is claimed. 
By his own efforts, with the help of the book, the man 
does this work. It is a self-immolation. It is the delib- 
erate suicide of every natural feeling, and a literal death 
to the interests of the common life of humanity. Se- 
questrated for ten years, the youth emerges from his 
solitude a man of iron will, of impenetrable mind, of a 
religion apparently without an earthly tie, his mind fixed 
on one idea, or eidolo7t, — that of the Church, of serving 
the Church and the Society of Jesus. He has submitted 
his free-will to a system, doing nothing spontaneously, 
reducing his life to one word — obedience. Yes, what- 
ever we have to criticise, there is a virility here which 
we cannot but admire. 

The intellectual training of the Jesuit seminary is no 
less remarkable than the moral. It tends to make habile 
instruments. Oratory, or the art of persuasive speech, is 
sedulously cultivated. Rhetorical praxis and criticism 
by the whole seminary — exercises in the management of 
the voice and delivery of sermons — are very searching 



Jesuit and Protestant Methods. 1 8 1 

and severe. The style of preaching, which is the result 
of such training, while it has great power over the pas- 
sions from its own self-poised knowledge, is bold, argu- 
mentative, and masculine, chiefly addressed to the intellect 
and aimed at practical results. It is no reed shaken by 
the wind. Where there is want of erudition there is that 
depth of knowledge and energy of will which carry force. 
The language is popular, but rarely low. Many great 
bishop-preachers, as well as orators of Notre Dame, have 
been the fruits of this training. The powerful and pop- 
ular preachers of the " Redemptorists " of New York, 
who can talk without notes straight to their hearers' 
minds and hearts, have come out of this method. 

The New Testament — I would say it with no scorn- 
ful feeling toward a society which numbers so many 
saints, missionaries, and martyrs — seems like blessed 
daily sunshine compared to the cavernous gloom of the 
system of Loyola. Its method of self-introspection, 
accompanied by the austerities of a monastic age, can- 
not be the way of preparation to preach the humane 
and loving Christ. We do not find light or strength by 
exploring the springs of selfishness and impurity in our 
own hearts, but must, by an exercise of faith, look away 
from ourselves to him who " is light, and in him is no 
darkness at all." Perfection lies only that way. Besides, 
Christ said that his disciples were not to be taken out 
of the world, but kept from its evil ; that, in using the 
powers, affections, and desires of our being — regulating 
and purifying, and not repressing or killing them — we 
are to serve him best who made us in his image. Celi- 
bacy of the clergy was the offshoot of Manichean phi- 



1 82 Horcz Homileticcz. 

losophy, and did not belong to the early Church ; the 
Greek Church never wholly gave in to it ; and the 
Roman itself only by degrees, cutting off its priesthood 
from human sympathies. A man, even an apostle, has 
duties to his parents, his brethren, it may be his wife 
and children, the State and the world, which he cannot 
repudiate without wrong. Christ did not do so. How 
did he train his disciples to preach? He did not send 
them into the caves of Engedi or tombs of Gadara to 
spend ten years in ascetic exercises and spiritual con- 
templations, but, after keeping them with himself in 
order to be made one with him in spirit and to learn 
what his gospel is, as he went about doing good, he com- 
manded them to go into all the world and preach that 
gospel of glad tidings to men, and he would be with 
them and inspire their love and energy. The life of a 
Protestant minister, holding forth the Word of God week 
after week in the pulpit, going constantly among his 
} people, now and then drawn into a moral or political 
discussion, distinguished by no badge or dress from his 
fellow-citizens, living much as other men do and calling 
no man master but Christ ; making no special profession 
of sanctity, but showing a Christly spirit of love to all, and 
moved by a life " hid with Christ in God," — this seems 
more like Christ's example. It is natural, while drawing 
from higher spiritual sources. Every human feeling and 
affection finds an expression ; every power is developed ; 
and here the Protestant Seminary, set in the heart of 
human interests, is more in consonance with the expan- 
sive freedom of the gospel than the Jesuit method. It 
is not a cloistered society, but a little world of thought 



Jesuit and Protestant Methods. 183 

and activity, penetrated by the healthy currents of com- 
mon life. Its range of studies may with profit be made 
more practical, humanistic, and comprehensive. Protes- 
tant learning, which has broken away from the bonds of 
a rigid system of dogmatic teaching based upon the 
authority of infallible tradition, gives scope to indepen- 
dent investigation, and opens the door to something like 
real progress in theological science. 

Yet notwithstanding the superior excellence, as a gen- 
eral rule, of Protestant seminaries, both in theory and 
practice : notwithstanding the marked ability with which 
they are often guided, they may learn some lessons from 
the Jesuit system: 1. To cultivate in young men an 
energetic and virile character. The aim of seminaries 
should be to make strong men, to weld in them an iron 
will to do anything and go anywhere, and endure hard- 
ness, despising worldly gain and ease. They are espe- 
cially the soldiers (milites), the trained militia of Christ's 
army. Students in seminaries should gather up their 
energy and will-power for grand effort. They are cer- 
tainly to be aided in all real difficulties, spiritual and 
intellectual, — perhaps, to some extent, secular. They 
may be helped over hard places, but never where they 
can surmount these themselves ; otherwise, their moral 
forces are enfeebled, their muscles are relaxed, the incen- 
tive for personal effort is removed, the tone of high, 
manly, vigorous character is insensibly lowered, if not 
prostrated. The time, it may be, has come, when the 
beneficiary system of our theological schools is to be 
judiciously reconsidered, and when young men are to be 
thrown more entirely upon their own resources, or at 



184 Hotcb Homileticcz. 

least placed upon the same footing with students of other 
professional schools. There should be no bid for minis- 
ters from any pecuniary motive whatever. This idea 
should be put out of the question. He who has it in 
his heart to preach Christ will find the way. He is not 
an indigent student and should never suffer himself to 
be so called, who possesses and studies the riches of 
God's truth. The strong voice that cried in the wilder- 
ness to prepare the way of the Lord, came from one 
whose seminary was the Holy Spirit, who lived on God's 
hand and spake the message God gave him, without fear 
or favour of man before his eyes. They must be strong 
who are to be leaders of men, and they must have the 
courage of their convictions. The preacher, to be 
strong, should be capable of self-controul and self-abne- 
gation. Resolve comes before action. He who would 
save the world must first save himself from the power of 
selfishness, and bring his will in union with the will of 
^od, and thus enter into the divine spirit of love for a 
world which he 

" Will heal, if healing may be found, 
By uttermost renouncing and strong strife." 

However lamentably and profoundly far we, as indi- 
vidual ministers, may feel ourselves to be from the mark, 
we know that, unless there be this spirit of complete 
self-consecration to the Master, renouncing all joyfully 
for him, with no doubt about it, the cause of the ad- 
vance of Christianity in our country, north and south, 
east and west, will undergo disaster, as if the leaders of 
the host should suffer blindness. From the coarse mate- 
rialism of anti-Christian sophists, or the refined material- 



yesuit and Protestant Methods. 185 

ism of religious form in the churches, or the still subtler 
materialism of a proud intellectual philosophy, or, above 
all, the deadly corruption of money and idolatry of riches, 
or from these and other more hidden causes combined. 
Christ himself may be expelled from the land, as was 
the case in the Roman Empire when the high martyr faith 
of the early Apostolic Church, springing warm and pure 
from the love of a personal, living Christ, was exchanged 
for a religion of dead externalism and abstract creed. 
2. We should aim after quality rather than numbers in 
theological students ; selecting the able and skilful instru- 
ments, if they be fewer ; there may be too many minis- 
ters if they are not the best. 3. We should impart not 
only learning, but wisdom and tact, — the power of deal- 
ing with and catching men. Our seminaries have a 
tendency to become scholastic institutions, so much so 
that some think the old system of family theological 
schools, under the care of individual ministers of repute, 
were better; but I am not of this way of thinking, so 
that the evil spoken of be corrected. The age has gone 
by for private schools of learning \ and the well-equipped 
seminary, if it do not close its doors to, and lose its hold 
upon popular sympathies, is a more favourable place for 
thorough study, for broad, quickening, and generous cul- 
ture of mind and heart. 4. We should train young men 
carefully in oratory, in the art of forcible, persuasive 
speech, and especially of extempore speaking, which is 
the only method of wielding a personal, powerful, and 
instantaneous influence over great masses. 5 . We should 
require a higher standard and more strictness in exami- 
nations both for entrance and degree. 6. We should 



1 86 Horcz Homileticce. 

mingle the meditative or devotional and the practical 
elements, and exercise the greatest care in the moral 
culture of students, — in all the finer laws of honourable 
Christian conduct. 7. We should cultivate the spirit of 
devotion to missionary work. The " Missioner " of the 
Episcopal Church (now claiming to be the most living 
Church in the world), who is doing such a good and for- 
ward work of attack upon the unchristianized minds in 
American cities and society, what is he but the Jesuit 
missionary in Protestant form and of purer faith? He 
has the same spirit of devotion to aggressive missionary 
work, be it in Europe or America, Thibet or China. 
8. We should avoid the Jesuit spirit of intrigue and man- 
agement, from which even Protestant ministerial minds 
may not be exempt, since a profession that deals chiefly 
with arguments and motives is apt to cultivate the casu- 
istical habit. 9. We should shun ambition, the seeking 
of power, the clerical caste, or class-spirit of power, 
against which Christ so solemnly warned his disciples, 
and of which the Jesuit Society is an example, not only 
from its triumphs, but its signal failures. The world 
moves : but how much has it moved since Arnold of 
Brescia was put to death for maintaining the truth that 
the kingdom of Christ is not of this world ! 

How would yon treat, homiletically \ tJie parable of 
the unjust steward? (Luke xvi. 1 — 14.) 
I offer but a suggestion or two, rather than present an 
elaborate plan. This parable certainly has inherent 
difficulties. The nut is hard, but the fruit rich. A ser- 
mon upon a parable will depend on the theory you 



Parable of the Unjust Steward. 187 

adopt, whether you assume it to be the teaching of a 
single spiritual truth, to which the rest of the narrative 
is added in order to make the story complete ; or, that 
every part and each word of the parable are full of 
spiritual and moral lessons. 

This parable of the unjust steward, I think, is not de- 
signed minutely to teach many lessons of moral conduct, 
but only one great lesson. This is the lesson of benefi- 
cence as a prudential measure. The explanation of the 
parable shows this, and it is best treated exegetically, or 
by way of exposition. When thus all carefully gathered 
up, the end of the parable will be seen irresistibly to be 
its prudential significance. 

The act recorded in the parable was an act of sheer 
injustice on the part of the " steward," and he belonged 
to " the children of this world," as well as did his 
" lord," who, nevertheless, by contrast (morally), as in 
other parables, — for example, the unjust judge and the 
thief at midnight, — represents God, perhaps Christ. 
The " steward," by the same figure, represents Christian 
disciples. 

The morals of the parable are to be contrasted, for 
greater effect, with the character of those for whose 
benefit it was intended. The prudence of the parable 
is the only thing in it we are to imitate. The " unright- 
eous mammon" is not necessarily property acquired by 
fraud, or used as the instrument of wickedness ; but it 
is that which has always been the object of gain by 
worldly men ; and " to provide friends out of the un- 
righteous mammon " does not therefore mean to make 
friendship with wicked men or their ways ; but, by the 



1 88 Horcz Hornileticc?. 

use of the unrighteous mammon, true friends are 
secured, so that " when it (mammon) fails, they (these 
friends) may receive you into everlasting habitations." 
The Christian is told to employ his worldly possessions 
in acts of benevolence among the worthy poor, who will 
receive him to eternal habitations. 

The parable would seem to teach men (above all 
Christian disciples) the right use of money in a cove- 
tous world, and the profound relations that material things 
bear to spiritual character and happiness. Base things 
become heavenly in their uses. 

A light is cast upon the true joys of blessed spirits, 
namely, the awakening of sympathy in the hearts of the 
good, and the bliss of being loved by those capable of 
loving purely. It touches the electric chain of sympathy 
that runs through the universe. It makes the rich man 
feel that it is for his everlasting good to help other men ; 
that then he makes the best bargain. He secures habi- 
tations that need not be left, because love is the only 
thing that is eternal and divine. 

What about preaching old sermons ? 

The best use one can make of most of his old ser- 
mons is to throw them into the waste-paper basket. 
Sermonic literature is dry and will burn, — it will at least 
for once kindle a fire. A minister who has reached or 
passed middle life will have hundreds upon hundreds of 
sermons that are fit only to be burned. A preacher of 
the last century in Connecticut left, when he died, seven 
thousand neatly written manuscript sermons ; a more 
famous New York preacher, it is said, left eight thou- 



Old Sermons. 189 



sand ; a small volume of six or seven sermons was 
published to be devoured by his faithful admirers, and 
the res: — by mice. Th be making light of the 

subject, but there is really great danger of a minister's 
creatin_ : -inking- fond of old sermons as pro- 

fess ional capital to draw upon, — a sure premium to 
professional indolence. One should cut himself or! from 
such a source of income, and become poor again. Then 
he will go to higher sources for supplies. Then he will 
go to w;rk and produce something new, something 
better. A ministry of old sermons is a downhill min- 
istiy. A sermon is not a scientific treatise which is as 
valuable to-morrow as it is to- -ion is a word, 

— divine love expressing itself in a word with the deni- 
zation of the Spirit and of power. How long is this 

] in s peaking ? When it has gone forth it returns 
again to whence it came. It has delivered the message, 

— a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. The 
rd is given :o a preacher to be used, and in the using 

ts end. It speaks, perhaps, but once with 
power, and that were blessing and reward enough for 
any preacher. Not only the subject, but the object, the 
occasion, the audience, the moral sympathies of speakers 
and hearers, the circumstances of hearts, the hungering 
need of souls requiring to be fed with the daily bread 
which perishes the longer it is kept, — this cannot be 
altogether reproc mnot be precisely repeated as 

a human nece be met by a divine gift. The man 

for whom the sermon was made may be drowned before 
it is preached again, and all his struggles and yearnings 
after God and a new life drowned with him. The com- 



I go Horcz Homileticce. 

munity, thrilled by some common affliction or agitated 
by some great anxiety, may be totally apathetic when 
the discourse is brought forth once more to awake a 
ghostly echo of past emotions. The sermon is the word 
in season, the fitting word, the living word which is 
inspired in the preacher who waits upon the intuitions 
of a sagacious and prayerful mind informed by the spirit 
of truth. The beautiful principle of adaptation has a 
deeper moral than rhetorical import, and is one of the 
most important in the business of preaching the Gospel ; 
and it is the earnest and conscientious study of this 
principle — the study of the Word in its application to 
real wants in the living circle of one's hearers and peo- 
ple, in the mystic sphere of life and of the divine in its 
vital human relations — that takes preaching out of the 
conventional type and stamps it with fresh popular 
power. 

Yet it is true also that viewing preaching chiefly in the 
light of instruction in the truth, there may be in it that 
which sometimes is worth preserving. A clear and 
well-arranged discourse upon some fundamental doctrine 
or duty, wherein both original thought and the most 
careful study have been employed, is a valuable result 
in itself. It may in some form or other be used again. 
There is such a thing as a thought which has life in it. 
This is infinitely exemplified in the thoughts of Him 
who said : " My words, they are spirit and they are 
life." In a lower sense this is true of such a preacher 
as Archbishop Leighton, whose sermons contain thoughts 
which are germs of spiritual life, and are therefore not to 
be carelessly thrown away and wasted, but which may 



Old Sermons. 191 



be productive of good and of the nourishment of souls 
in the faith. Nor is this confined to Leighton. Such 
thoughts form the nucleus of future thinking and devel- 
opment upon the same theme. I would therefore by 
no means counsel preachers to destroy all these genuine 
fruits of mental labour, but let them still be very careful 
how they use such intellectual products again in the way 
of sermons, for intellectual elaboration is not spiritual 
evolution and life. The Spirit must revivify and use 
such sermons if they are to constitute true preaching. 

The correspondent who asks the question that heads 
these remarks, himself points out a sensible method of 
employing old sermons, and I will quote what he says : 

" I suppose the sermons we prepare in the first years of 
our ministry have more care bestowed upon them, as we are 
usually very anxious then, so that the time devoted to ser- 
mon-writing is really not thrown away. These sermons 
therefore have not done all their service. My course now, 
after twenty-three years, is to take those old sermons, once 
so carefully prepared, read them over attentively, see what 
line of thought was followed, adopt the original sketch, add 
the accumulated reading of the years that have elapsed, 
throw the manuscript entirely aside and go to the pulpit with 
practically a fresh sermon, and being now unwritten (not 
exte?npore) it has a better effect than a written sermon. 
This I do at least once a month, and it gives me more time 
to prepare actually new sermons." 

If one followed this advice, no harm, but only good 
would come from the preaching of old sermons. I 
would add here that in my own use of the term " extem- 
pore " I always mean speaking without notes, unwritten, 
but not unpremeditated or carelessly composed ser- 



192 Horcz Homileticcz. 

mons ; they may and should be, on the contrary, fruits 
of the severest study and thinking. In true exte?npore 
preaching the words only are left to the moment and 
not perhaps even all of these ; but freedom of mind is 
secured by reliance on thought, on one's self, on the 
deeply meditated theme possessing, warming, and in- 
spiring the preacher, and, above all, on God's instant 
help of His believing messenger, and not upon a cold 
and dead manuscript. 

Therefore I would venture to suggest: 1. Never de- 
pend upon old sermons for your ministry, — this is fatal. 

2. Never preach an old sermon where you can preach a 
new one, even on the same subject and the same text. 

3. If you preach an old sermon always rewrite it, recast 
it in a fresh form, using the thought that is good in it 
rather than using its special form of presenting the truth. 
It is said of an eminent preacher of Boston, that by the 
marks on one of his sermons he had preached it ninety- 
eight times, but it is also known of him that he rewrote 
his sermons frequently, and there was a spirit in his 
preaching which kept it and him alive in spite of his old 
sermons. 4. Having remoulded the material of an old 
sermon into a new form, like a potter, thrust it once 
more into the furnace-fires of divine love, of ardent 
prayer, and spiritual desire for the highest good of men 
and the pure glory of God. 

Are not topical sermons to be considered the best 

method of preaching ? 

I beg to refer my correspondent from Iowa who fa- 
vours strongly the topical method, to my work called 



Topical Sermons. 193 

" Homiletics," and to the chapter under the general 
head of the " classification of sermons " (p. 444 et 
seq.) for a discussion of topical sermons in a more 
thorough manner than can here be done, hoping that 
the egotism of this may, under the circumstances, be 
excused. 

The topical method has advantages and cannot be 
entirely laid aside, but it also has decided disadvantages 
and perils. It emphasizes the method. It demands 
a treatment more or less rationalistic (I do not say 
rational), thus tending to a less practical and spiritual 
type of preaching. It runs into essay writing. It almost 
irresistibly results in a stereotyped style, with military 
divisions and a rigid plan. A sermon ought to have 
points, but not always five or three. The topical ser- 
mon is abstract not concrete. It is, in one sense, 
human rather than divine ; for he who accustoms himself 
to preach from topics, as did the schoolmen, instead of 
directly from texts, becomes less and less biblical in his 
tone and spirit. He disconnects himself more and 
more from the true idea of preaching as the delivering 
of a message from God, reinforced, it is true, by human 
reason and argument, but not dependent upon it as its 
chief means of persuasion. I cannot but think that this 
was the case with the celebrated Dr. Emmons, that 
master-artificer of topical discourses. He who finds his 
inspiration as well as theme in a word of God, in a text 
instead of a topic, comes, on the other hand, nearer to 
the living Word. It is better to find, for example, even 
so essential a doctrine as Regeneration in some one 
passage of Holy Writ which presents this great theme in 

13 



194 Hotce Homileticcz. 

a special way as a soul's experience, or a teaching of 
Christ, or a revelation of the Spirit, — deep, unexpected, 
exhaustless, and eternal, — than to find it m our limited 
text-book or note-book of theology. By devout study 
of particular texts one may discover fresh views even in 
such a truth, springing from its psychologic relations 
and scriptural analogies. For a young minister I should 
say decidedly, let him begin with preaching from texts, 
— studying them carefully in their original and with 
the practical understanding as well as analytic intel- 
lect, with the heart as well as the head, placing them 
alongside human life, — and he will have a more 
spiritually inspired and truly successful ministry of 
the Word. Biblical exegesis should lie at the bot- 
tom of every sermon. The sermons of F. W. Rob- 
ertson were thoroughly exegetical, and sprang from 
texts, drew their life from texts, while they possessed 
a partially topical method. They went to the roots 
of things because they followed the divine leadings of 
thought. 

Will you give an example of the treatment of an 

historical sermon ? 

Briefly, the conversion of St. Paul is a noble theme 
for an historical sermon. It is narrated three times in 
the Acts, first by the historian, and then in two addresses 
by the apostle, in Jerusalem and before Agrippa. The 
apostle also alludes to the spiritual communications 
made to him at his conversion, — the vision and voice 
of the Lord, — in i Cor. xv. 8. 

There is scope for profound analysis of the man in 



An Historical Sermon. 195 

whom three civilizations met, and who was the instru- 
ment shaped by divine will to preach the gospel to the 
nations. 

The cultivation of the " historic imagination," as it 
has been called, is a great quality in the preacher, and is 
particularly required in a passage like this. 

The time, place, and circumstances of the apostle's 
conversion — its historic and moral milieu — admit of 
the highest dramatic delineation, and call for the most 
accurate and extensive learning. Even its physical cir- 
cumstances were picturesque. I vividly recall the broad 
dusty plain where the event of St. Paul's conversion 
must have taken place, in drawing near the ancient 
city of Damascus ; and, above all, the fiercely dazzling 
brilliance of the sun at noon. The Bible story needed 
but the supernatural element to make it true then and 
there. 

The inner elements of conversion are to be distin- 
guished from the outer. There is an error in think- 
ing that all conversions are similar or of the ictic 
kind. It should be shown in what the apostle's was 
peculiar, and in what it was identical with every true 
conversion. 

I. The conversion of St. Paul subjectively consid- 
ered : (a) The ruling purpose of life is changed. There 
is the same energetic man as before losing none of his 
natural traits, but his aim of life is transformed from 
a selfish (even if unconsciously so) to a holy one. 
(b) His religious beliefs are changed from the line of 
the Jew to that of the Christian, especially in what re- 
lates to the kingdom of God. (Y) New Christly elements 



196 Horcz Homileticce. 

of character are introduced to renew the man spiritually. 
— faith, humility, love. 

II. Objectively considered : (a) Seen in what Paul 
himself immediately achieved. (b) Seen in the greater 
development of Christian truth and diffusion of the gos- 
pel throughout the world in all ages down to us. 
These results should be treated historically and broadly 
in regard to Christian life and ethics. 

Application : We, too, are to have the new Pauline 
spirit in what he was, and did, and above all in the 
greatness of his faith, whose principle was love, and 
whose expression was trust in the gospel as the wisdom 
and power of God to save all men, if indeed we wish, 
like him, to conquer and save the world. 

Will you speak about the Sabbath evening service ? 
Should a preacher of ordinary ability attempt two 
sermons a week ? If not, what should be the 
character of the evening service ? What is the 
practice of our distinguished preachers in this 
respect ? 

I cannot answer these questions with categorical posi- 
tiveness. It must be said that two sermons on Sunday 
is not an ancient custom. It is comparatively a modern 
innovation. In the times of primitive Christianity when 
there was the synagogue form of worship, and even when 
the assembly was held in the Roman Catacombs in days 
of persecution, we do not, from any account left us, ob- 
tain the idea that there was more than one preaching 
sendee on Sunday. 



Sabbath Evening Service. 197 

It is true the Apostle Paul at Troas preached so long 
that " he continued his speech until midnight," but the 
circumstances were peculiar, and he had that to say which 
he could not say again to the same audience. In the 
Patristic ages, we gather from the ancient Dominical 
calendar that there was one great service on the Sabbath 
(which was a festival day), held in the morning, in which 
the sermon came after the reading of the Gospel, and 
was strictly a part of the regular public worship. On 
occasions of particular devotion, however, we read that 
there was evening preaching as well as morning. In 
several of Chrysostom's discourses he alluded to their 
being preached in the afternoon. Augustine makes it 
clear that he preached now and then in the afternoon. 
Some o£ the discourses of Basil the Great were preached 
in the evening, — but all these were evidently excep- 
tional occasions. In the Middle Ages, preaching was 
infrequent and was mostly done by the bishop ; it was 
in fact usually connected with the elaborate cathedral 
service on Sabbath morning. It is true that short addresses 
not called sermons were made at various hours and dur- 
ing week days. In the Reformation, the times of preaching 
were more irregular. There is no rule which binds mod- 
ern preachers in this respect. It must be left to the 
wisdom of individual churches and preachers. The fash- 
ion, now becoming almost obsolete, of morning and after- 
noon preaching services, had assuredly great advantages. 
It enabled the preacher to give unity of instruction and 
impression to the lessons of the day. What he omitted 
in the morning he could say in the afternoon ; he could 
follow up the morning's sermon by a more practical dis- 



igS Horcz Homileticce* 



course upon the same or a similar topic, thus giving one 
lesson, dealing one blow. Then the evening was left 
open either for a church prayer-meeting, which was an 
admirable institution to deepen the religious impressions 
of the day and to ascertain the interest awakened by 
the preaching, or it was unoccupied by any public 
sendee and there was opportunity for quiet home and 
family devotion. But times are changing and the Puritan 
methods are fast giving way, and the question is how to 
save what was really good in them and to bring in what 
is better still. 

As to the custom of evening preaching I can only an- 
swer for the city where I live, and would say that our 
" distinguished preachers " find it useful to preach morn- 
ing and evening. This is also the custom in New York 
City in the larger churches of all denominations ; and if 
there were not good reasons for this it would probably 
not be followed. This is the practice now in many New 
England country towns as far as my observation goes. 
The evening sendee draws to it a somewhat different 
audience from the morning, and attracts young men and 
persons who othenvise would pass the evening idly or in 
social gatherings and places not morally improving. 

It can be well enough seen that in some very isolated 
and sparsely settled communities but one preaching ser- 
vice would be practicable. In other villages where there 
are more people but the distances great, morning and 
afternoon preaching sendees, with brief intemd between, 
would be convenient. In the larger manufacturing towns 
a morning and evening sendee would be more profitable. 
Ministers must judge for themselves. It is not by our 



A Biographical Sermon. 199 

much speaking that we are heard by the Lord, or even 
by the people. Often the impression of one good ser- 
mon is obliterated by a second, or a third on the same 
day. It would undoubtedly be a great relief to clergy- 
men to be able to concentrate their strength on one 
sermon ; but if this plan were pursued, they are also to 
think whether an opportunity might not be lost for say- 
ing something to benefit other classes in the community, 
or for reaching other objects. The rule under certain 
reasonable conditions and limitations is, of course, to 
strive for the greatest good to be effected, and this the 
minister with the help of his church must decide in every 
given case ; and that is why ministers are appointed to 
be leaders in spiritual things. 

Will you give an instance of a biographical sermon 
and its uses t 

Its uses are greater than are commonly supposed, and 
it is to be regretted that this kind of sermon has some- 
what gone out of vogue. If God is in history, He is first 
of all in the history of ever}* man. Biography is a frag- 
ment of humanity, and as a stone broken from a moun- 
tain it tells us the elements of which the whole mass is 
composed. In so far as biography teaches, it teaches by 
example ; and a religion which has its very life in a Per- 
son who is our human example, cannot afford to neglect 
the vital suggestion and instruction which biography af- 
fords. This is a concrete argument that pulses with real 
life-blood. It penetrates from the outward man, the 
show of being, to the inward and formative elements of 
character, to what one really is and loves. It is interest- 



200 Horcz Homileticce. 

ing to see that biographical preaching is esteemed useful 
by laymen, — and for such doubtless the Gospels and the 
Book of Acts were made full as much as for theologians. 
On the general subject a thoughtful English writer says : 

" Protestants have put aside the ancient Roman calendar, 
but they have not repudiated the principle of it. They hold 
the admiration offered to have been excessive in degree or 
superstitious in kind, and the objects of it to have been, in 
many instances, ill chosen. But the principle of setting up 
objects of imitation is admitted by them as much as by 
Catholics. The lives of Moses, David, Ezra, St. Paul, fur- 
nish the material of a large proportion of Protestant sermons. 
Nor does any school theoretically maintain that such objects 
of imitation are to be found only in the Bible. No preacher 
is blamed for referring in the pulpit to modern examples of 
virtue ; but it is supposed to be advisable, in the main, to 
keep within the limits of Scriptural history." 

Why should we not discourse upon the lives of unscrip- 
tural saints, canonized or uncanonized, if God dwelt in 
them to will and to do of His good pleasure as truly as 
He did in lives given us in Holy Writ? Did they not 
equally manifest the divine love that dwelt in them? 
Why should not preachers hold up to view such lives 
(fruits of the Spirit whose gifts are endlessly varied) as 
those of Chrysostom, St. Francis of Assisi, Raimund 
Lull, John Huss, Martin Luther, Palissy the Potter, Ad- 
miral de Coligny, Fenelon, John Henry Wichern, founder 
of the Rauhes Haus, John Wesley and Edward Irving, 
the Scotch McCheyne, the sweet poets Herbert and 
Keble, the theologians and teachers Schleiermacher, 
Thomas Arnold, Frederick Denison Maurice, the Eng- 
lish business philanthropists Thos. Brassey and George 



A Biographical Sermon. 201 

Moore, the missionary Livingstone, the temperance 
reformer Mathew, the martyrs Patteson and Damien, 
and hundreds of less conspicuous names but perhaps 
as heroic lives, elect ladies and noble mothers, sol- 
diers, artisans, slaves even, who have exemplified the 
Christian virtues in an evil world ? Such persons through 
their strength and weakness have exhibited the same 
anointing spirit of Christ that fell upon the heads of 
disciples on the day of Pentecost. To use their lives for 
lessons would only be obeying the principle of the words 
of St. Paul : " Be ye followers of me, even as I also am 
of Christ." The only difficulty in the way of taking up 
the lives of modern saints is pithily expressed in one of 
Robertson's sermons : " Faultless men and pattern chil- 
dren, — you may admire them, but you admire coldly. 
Praise them as you will, no one is better for their exam- 
ple. No one blames them, and no one loves them : 
they kindle no enthusiasm ; they create no likeness of 
themselves ; they never reproduce themselves in other 
lives, — the true prerogative of all original lives." True 
words. But biographies and biographical sermons are 
growing more conscientiously close to fact, more ruggedly 
realistic ; and thus they can be made use of without so 
much fear of pious frauds. Still the counsel is good that 
it is " advisable in the main to keep within the limits of 
Scriptural history." Following this, I will take a Scrip- 
tural character, one from the Old Testament, and not 
even a saint. 

It is well in preaching a biographical sermon to take 
for a text not the whole narrative, but, if possible, some 



202 Horce Homileticcz. 

salient passage, which gathers up the spirit, drift, and 
lesson of the life in one sentence, — and such lives are 
evidently given us in the divine history as illustrating 
some particular lesson or principle. 

Numbers xxiii. 10, " Let me die the death of the 
righteous, and let my last end be like his." 

The character of Balaam is a deep one, — one of amaz- 
ing power, of mixed good and evil with a strife of 
elemental forces in his soul. He takes us out of the 
ecclesiastical circle of things into the natural, and we 
may study in him the original revelation of God in Nature 
and in the human mind. 

One should not write a sermon merely to develop a 
subject, but to attain an object, and it is not enough to 
develop Balaam's character, but he should be made to 
teach us and to benefit our characters. The past should 
be turned into the present. The text contains the key 
of Balaam's character. The desire to die the death of 
the righteous is founded upon great intelligence, deep 
penetration into the ruling forces of the moral world, 
even if unaccompanied by the moral force to be right- 
eous. What is a righteous man? What is the essence 
of righteousness? How is this righteousness connected, 
surely, with good, — or a happy life, death, and future ? 
These are questions to be answered. Balaam saw their 
profound significance. 

What it is that " makes for righteousness " is pretty 
much like asking what is goodness, and what is a good man. 
Some religions, some erroneous views of the Christian 
religion even, may find difficulty in settling these questions 
satisfactorily. The mere rationalist cannot answer them. 



A Biographical Sermon. 203 

We might attempt an answer by saying that he who 
lays his life willingly under the divine law of right re- 
vealed in his own reason and conscience, is the right- 
eous man, for this implies an entire surrender to God's 
holy will and renewing spirit. Since God's fuller revela- 
tion has been made in his Son, true righteousness is 
found in Christ, though Balaam himself might have 
found it, and might have found Christ in his day. 

It would be necessary that there should be a philo- 
sophical and yet Christian discussion of the principle of 
" righteousness," and then of the connection of righteous- 
ness and good. 

From the life of Balaam, so intensely human, so full 
of great lights and shadows, taken in connection with 
the text, — the profound cry of agonizing despair pushed 
from a great soul, — deep spiritual instruction may be 
drawn. 

1. The highest knowledge of divine things (as in this 
preternaturally intelligent mind) does not insure salva- 
tion ; one who knows what it is may fail of its light, 
peace, and final reward. 

2. In all men this law of righteousness is found, as 
well as the consciousness, that if followed, it will lead to 
good. This is true of heathens. Take, for instance, such 
a man as Keshub Chunder Sen, who from the depths of 
Brahminism rose probably into the Christian life, and left 
behind him when dead a spirit, a seed which will not 
die ; and Balaam, above all, who probably failed in fol- 
lowing the light which his keen intelligence perceived. 

3. All opposition to the Church or Kingdom of God 
must fail, because the Church is founded on that law of 



204 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

righteousness or right, which is the law of being and the 
very essence of God. This opposition or curse may, 
however, be changed into a blessing, as shown in the 
biblical account of Balaam. 

4. Death and its connection with righteousness, or 
what it opens to the righteous. Hengstenberg thought 
that Balaam had been led to renounce idolatry by hear- 
ing of the wonders and miracles which had attended the 
course of the Israelites through the desert, and supposed 
that as a reward for his change of religion he would be 
gifted with insight into futurity and greater power over 
Nature. Balaam was already, in one sense, a prophet, 
a seer of the one God ; therefore some think he was a 
relic of the patriarchal age at a time when the knowledge 
of God was not restricted to the Semitic race. 

The conflict of moral forces, the original divine revela- 
tion in the human mind, the historic circumstances, the 
mysterious interplay of the natural and supernatural so 
difficult to interpret aright, the common ground of 
human responsibility in all characters of men whether 
ancient or modern, the tremendous lesson of divine gifts 
misused, — the lesson to prophet and people alike, — 
make the life of Balaam a most fruitful topic for a 
biographical sermon. 

Will you give an example of a topical sermon and 
its plan ? 

As this is the ordinary form of published pulpit dis- 
courses, an example might readily be found (not to 
speak of the older preachers) in modern literature, and 
nowhere better than in the unsurpassed sermons of F. 



A Topical Sermon. 205 

W. Robertson, or J. B. Mozley, or of our own Bushnell. 
In artless simplicity of construction and finished ease of 
style, J. H. Newman, as shown in his u Parochial and 
Plain Sermons," is superior to all. But I will take what 
seems to be a fit text, and treat it with some elaborate 
fulness of plan while talking familiarly of the process, 
although another might adopt quite a different method 
of homiletical treatment of the same passage, and another, 
one differing from both, such is the endless richness of 
the Word. Of course, whatever looks like learning 
whether Greek or Gennan in the plan, would not ap- 
pear in the sermon whose style should be suited to plain 
men. 

Heb. xii. 14, last clause of verse. — " Holiness, with- 
out which no man shall see the Lord." 

A scholar of the sixteenth century wished his dying 
hours could be lengthened out in order that he might 
devote them to the study of St. Paul's epistle to the 
Hebrews. Whether the epistle to the Hebrews was 
written by that apostle or not, it is an apostolic book, full 
of the faith which works by love and purifies the soul, 
though much hid in Old Testament shadow and symbol. 

This text contains a perfect thesis, or theme, which is 
also given in a compact form, and for this reason I have 
chosen it. 

The explanation of the text is almost always the basis 
of the sermon. We should come first at the real contents 
of the text, and then only can we draw from it the real 
subject. Sometimes the explanation suggests the ser- 
mon and makes the sermon ; at all events there should 
be definition before proposition. The definition should 



206 Horcz Homileticce. 

not be dry but of a living sort, and I would try to bring 
out by the treatment of this text the point that every 
text, which is a fragment of divine truth, needs some 
explanation to clear it from its human surroundings of 
time, place, and circumstance, and to reveal its absolute 
meaning, — a primary law in sermon-making; and this 
text from the Hebrews contains, as has been said, a dis- 
tinct theme, which can therefore fitly form the foundation 
of a discourse. 

A topical sermon is a true discourse, in the rhetorical 
sense, combining analysis and synthesis, and arranged 
according to the rules of art with a view of producing 
an impression on human minds ; or, in other words, it is 
a sacred oration addressed chiefly to the reason, and 
through the reason to the conscience and heart. It is 
Demosthenes in the pulpit instead of upon the bema. 
It concerns itself about a particular proposition, and has 
as distinct a subject as well as object as the " Oration on 
the Crown." Although I do not think it is the way in 
which the earliest preachers preached the gospel, the 
topical sermon came early into the Church with Greek 
rhetoric and philosophy, and has done, doubtless, a good 
work, and will continue to do so in the hands of a cer- 
tain class of preachers, though there is " a more excellent 
way," and one more profoundly vitalized with spiritual 
power, life, and love, but none the less the way of reason 
and intellect, and which will be more and more appre- 
ciated as time goes on, and men are better taught by the 
Spirit of Truth, which is also the Spirit of Christ. 

A definite portion of God's Word is thus placed before 
the preacher in a text to be dealt with, and this he is to 



A Topical Sermon. 207 

interpret to men's intelligence so that the receptive 
reason, or logos in them, shall recognize the divine reas- 
on, or logos, in the text ; for no man receives or believes 
what he did not believe, or at least was not made to 
believe before. The kingdom of God in the Word of 
God is only the expression or revelation of the kingdom 
of God in man. 

Now there is a great and beautiful truth of the king- 
dom of God in this text ; and what can I do (the 
preacher says) to make it clear to my hearers so that 
they shall come into its interior life, so that they shall 
receive with faith and joy this divine lesson to their 
souls? The question is, how shall I treat this text not 
so much for my own instruction as for the instruc- 
tion and building up of the people in the most holy 
faith ? What is the divine fact involved in the text which 
is to be evolved in the discourse, and which it is eternal 
life for men to know and obey ? 

Three things seem necessary to be explained, viz : 
" Holiness," — " to see the Lord," — " the Lord." Even 
in regard to the explanation, while there is no rigid rule 
for its place and time, it would seem natural that at the 
beginning of the discourse the principal terms of the 
text should be explained, and above all the main thought 
of the whole — " Holiness." 

" Holiness " has here the same general sense as " pur- 
ity " — the quality belonging to " the pure in heart " who 
shall see God. It means that moral blamelessness of 
purpose and life which springs from a pure heart, since 
holiness as well as sin proceeds from its seat in the heart ; 
it comes through the inward purification of the whole 



208 Horce Homileticcz. 

spiritual being. " Holiness " (tov aytao-jjibv) has in this 
place the sense of something devoted to a holy object, 
something sacred, as set apart to God like a Hebrew 
altar, and is so used in the sixth chapter of Romans, 2 
Thess. ii. 13, 1 Peter i. 2, and in many other places in 
the New Testament ; or, in other words, it conveys the 
idea of sanctification and purification of the nature, and 
not technically and in a theological sense imputed right- 
eousness or holiness. It means a new principle of obedi- 
ence, an inward separation from the world and its corrup- 
tion, a sincere turning of the heart amid its temptations 
and imperfections to the holy will of the Father, " deny- 
ing ungodliness and worldly lusts," and thus signifies a 
germ of the heavenly nature, of the kingdom of God 
implanted in us, — implanted in the very constitution of 
our spiritual nature, though covered up and choked by 
sin, — by the Spirit of God. 

How may this " holiness " be more particularly defined? 

1. The predominance of the spiritual over the sen- 
sual in man. The spiritual, not the fleshy mind, the 
mind in which the "spirit of holiness " dwells, rules 
amid the wayward influences which beset a human be- 
ing, like a ship steered by a firm hand, through storm 
and shine, in one main course. 

2. The real purification of the heart by the Holy Spirit 
— the whole inward man pervaded by a cleansing divine 
influence that reaches the controlling springs of moral 
character, bringing the thoughts of the heart into subjec- 
tion to Christ. 

3. The aim — in reliance on the love and spirit of 
Christ — after perfection itself, the perfection of the 



A Topical Sermon. 209 

" sons of God " who are " perfect as He is perfect." 
The first clause of the text in which is the active subject 
or impulse of the whole, speaks of this as a " pursuit," as 
a holy aim combined with the following after " peace," 
which is alone found purely in God, as in Augustine's 
words: "The heart, O God, was made for Thee, and 
always will be restless until it returns to Thee." 

" To see the Lord," signifies the true spiritual appre- 
hension of God in His Son, who is the manifestation of 
the Father. It is the clear beholding of God's character 
and nature, or the seeing Him " as He is," which pre- 
supposes the ability to do so, and a spiritual fitness in 
the beholder for this (Rev. xxii. 4 ; Matt. v. 8). Meyer, 
whose words generally go to the root of a text, certainly 
so far as an unerring scholarly intuition can carry him, 
says : — " Das Schauen versinnlicht den Begriff innigster 
Vei'einigung, tend das Ganze ist eine Bezeichnung der 
messiaiiischen Seligkeit im vollendeten Gottesreich" — 
which words I venture to quote. 

John xviii. 6, is not opposed to this view, because 
the passage refers to seeing God w T ith our bodily eyes or 
senses, while God is truly approached and revealed to 
the inner spiritual eye by faith (Rom. v. 1, 2). 

"The Lord." The article here determines nothing, 
since it signifies in other passages sometimes the Father, 
and sometimes the Son (Matt. xxiv. 20) ; but it is evi- 
dently, in this place, God in Ghrist, God manifested fully 
in the personal being and kingdom of the Son (Heb. ix. 
28.) 

Having in the simple explanation of the text thus 
brought to view something of the moral and spiritual 



210 Horcz Homileticce. 

fitness needed for the true revelation of God to the mind, 
we are better prepared for a proposition which shall em- 
body all this as the topic of a sermon drawn from the 
text. The subject then might be : — 

Purity of heart the essential condition of apprehending 
God and divine things. 

The main reason or proofs are these : — 

I. One must be wrought into the same disposition or 
spirit in order to know the spiritual and holy God. He 
must be raised to the same plane of moral temper, com- 
prehension, and being. Like comprehends like. The 
faculty of knowing does not stand alone, but depends 
also upon a man's inclination and spirit of mind. " If 
any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine 
whether it be of God." The intellect by itself does not 
apprehend spiritual being, but this knowledge comes 
through the appreciation of the purified trust and moral 
affections. Even as a man's aesthetic capacity must be 
opened to enjoy Nature, and his reason to enjoy scien- 
tific knowledge, so the spiritual being must be opened to 
perceive the spiritual God and divine things. " He that 
loveth is born of God and knoweth God." 

II. The disturbing element of sensual passions must 
be removed, for the pure reason and affections to gain 
their ascendancy, and to act clearly in the field of moral 
and spiritual truth. 

III. Purity of motive in obeying the will of God con- 
verts the object and subject of obedience into one, so 
that the believing man grows more and more Christ-like, 
and "a partaker of the divine nature." What is divine 
in him is liberated from its temporary bondage of evil, 



A Topical Sermon. 2 1 1 

beholds the eternal redemption that Christ has wrought 
for it, and acts, thinks, and sees freely and holily as a 
child of God. 

This truth which I have attempted to prove may 
meet objections like these: (1) It conflicts with es- 
sential Christianity, or the work of Christ. But that it 
does not do so is seen from the fact that Christ died in 
order to make us pure and holy. This was the end and 
aim of His perfect sacrifice, — to redeem us from all sin, 
that we might be holy and unblamable in the sight of 
God. (2) It conflicts with the fact of sin in holy men. 
But that it does not do so is seen, because " holiness " 
in the text does not mean perfect holiness of act and 
life, like that of a purely spiritual being, but the princi- 
ple of devotion to good, of holiness or purity in the 
heart, of the life of God in our humanity as its divinely 
ruling principle. 

How rich the inferences and teachings to be gathered 
from such a truth as this ! 

1. The end of all our living is to obtain the glorious 
vision of God. 

2. We can never see God should we grow angelic in 
intellect did we not love and obey Him in all purity of 
heart. 

3. The beginning of holiness in this life shall be 
perfected in the life to come. This is the heavenly 
state begun now. Heaven or eternal life is the power 
and creation of the immanent God whether here or 
hereafter. Many a man — as we perhaps have seen — 
belongs more to heaven even now than to earth, and 
there is a light on him which never was on sea or land. 



212 Horcz Homileticcz. 

What keeps any of us from seeing the glory of God here is 
but the mist of earth and sense, as the apostle John says : 
" That was the true light, even the light which lighteth 
every man coming into the world." 

4. The longings after holiness experienced by good 
men — not weak and sentimental, but such as rise in 
the heart of a strong man mingled with pain and great 
conflicts of spirit — are really satisfied in God. 

5. " The pure in heart" shall be able truly to know 
God, to hold intercourse with Him as dear children, to 
come nigh unto Him and enjoy Him, to do His holy 
will perfectly, and to love and " see God " now and 
forever. 

What course would you recommend a preacher to 
pursue to rid himself of a habit of halting often 
for words when speaking ? 

The question implies that the correspondent who asks 
it holds to the good old custom of extempore preaching, 
— by far the best method when it is what it ought to 
be, terse, thoughtful, sympathetic, and forcible. Luther 
said that " he who can speak is a man; " he did not 
say this of him who reads. But to be an extempore 
preacher one must possess a mastery of all his powers 
of body, mind, and spirit, for it is a supreme effort of 
manhood. The answer a mathematical instructor with 
whom I am acquainted and who himself is never at a 
loss for a word would make to the question, and that 
right off, would be : " Let him be put through a hard 
course of mathematics ; " and would he be far out of 
the way? Since speaking is, first, a mental act, and a 



Halting for Words. 213 

man must have something to say before he says it, dis- 
cipline in logical thinking is at the root of clear and 
ready speaking. Confusion of thought makes confusion 
of speech. When a thought lies lucid in the mind, 
having freed itself from all ambiguous and doubtful 
conditions, there will be no difficulty in finding words 
to express it. A vigorous ratiocinative process within 
clears for itself without a course of utterance that like a 
torrent brought to a head sweeps away every lingering 
obstacle, hesitation, and difficulty in expression. So we 
often give the advice, Let the mind be filled with the sub- 
ject and the words will take care of themselves, — in 
nine cases out of ten they will do so, for in nine cases out 
of ten the difficulty is psychical instead of physical, and 
even in the exceptional one it may be a physical obstacle 
that can be overcome by an effort of will. Will-power 
ought to be as much educated by a speaker as reasoning 
power. I knew a theological student who not only 
possessed no natural gift or mental quickness for impro- 
vised speaking, but who had also a decided stammering 
in his delivery that constituted a serious physical ob- 
stacle to his becoming a preacher at all, — but awakened 
to the value of extempore speaking as increasing his 
power in the pulpit, by a tremendous effort of pure will 
and patient toil, having made a vow never to preach 
with notes, he so trained himself that the difficulty was 
overcome, and although he stammered and hesitated 
still in ordinary conversation, when he preached he 
spoke without hesitation and with uncommon power and 
freedom. He adopted also rather an argumentative 
style and trained himself to close thinking, not shunning 



214 Horcz Homileticcz. 

the most difficult and abstruse subjects. He thus ex- 
emplified Quintilian's conception of the orator, that it 
is the whole man who speaks, that it is one who brings 
in play all the forces of his nature, and that oratory, in 
fact, is the end to which the entire mental and moral 
development of the student is to be directed. 

But facility of speech — a ready use of words — is a 
special gift. When it is not bestowed by nature, then 
it must be acquired by great pains, and it may be easily 
thwarted by slight physical causes. Forgetfulness of 
words in speaking may be occasioned by temporary 
bodily weakness, bad digestion, sleeplessness, ill-health, 
and any letting down of the tone of the bodily system. 
It may become an actual disease, affecting the memory 
like the trouble called aphasia. Power is lost by con- 
siderable and repeated hesitation for words ; that sympa- 
thetic flow of thought and feeling is lost which influences 
more and more by accumulation the minds of hearers 
like a magnetic stream pouring upon them, and which 
when once broken is not easily restored. Therefore, to 
speak well one must be well and have all his vital ener- 
gies in easy and healthful play, so that the minds of 
those who listen to him are conscious of a power that bears 
them along flowingly on its deep, strong, unbroken current. 

It is said of the younger William Pitt, that he cultivated 
his facility in the use of words by a running translation 
of Latin or French, uttered aloud. Practice in a debat- 
ing society is to be recommended to young speakers, if at 
the same time they can avoid the slovenliness of style, 
the redundant rhetoric, and the endless repetition of a 
stock debater. Some men's minds work slower than 



Halting for Words. 2 1 5 

others, and a debating club is apt to quicken the mind and 
rouse it, as the body is stimulated in a race or athletic 
game. Many of the most brilliant of the Parliamentary 
orators have been trained in the Union Club of Oxford ; 
but English speakers nowadays do not strive to be elo- 
quent, and in this they have made an advance ; they 
strive, only with a little more care as to method and 
choice of words, to talk right on sensibly, manfully, — 
at times forcibly, — and without confusion either in 
thought or language. The best way to enrich one's 
vocabulary is by copious reading of the best English 
literature, both of prose and poetry ; and those truly 
masterly fictions, like Thackeray's, of which we have 
examples in these days, in which subtlety of thought, 
penetrative analysis of character, and plastic harmonies 
of style, mingled with realistic vigor, are exhibited, 
should not be entirely shut out of a minister's reading 
and course of training for the earnest business of preach- 
ing. Even a careful study of synonyms is useful. The 
cultivation of conversation as a fine art is also helpful, 
and serves to take one out of the student habit of mind 
into a larger space and public area, as it were, where 
he must give up his subjective tendencies and endless 
ramifications of thought, and speak to common men of 
common things. But, after all, practice in speaking 
off-hand directly to the souls of men, women, and chil- 
dren at the prayer-meeting, in the Sunday-school, in the 
lecture-room for running exposition of the Scriptures, on 
the platform, and wherever a word may be said in season 
from a full mind working constantly upon these vital 
themes that relate to the Kingdom of God and the 



216 Horce Homileticcz. 

salvation of men, forms the best preparation for ready, 
effective utterance in the pulpit. 

What is meant by a textual sermon, and will you 
exemplify this ? 

Technically, a textual sermon is one that follows with- 
out deviation the terms of the text, clause by clause, 
word by word, and the text's form moulds the sermon's 
plan as closely as a model does a cast ; but I would 
prefer to widen this definition, and employ textual in the 
sense of finding the actual material, the real thought, 
inspiration, and life of the sermon in the text. This 
enables the preacher faithfully to interpret the Word of 
God, and to carry out the invaluable truth that preaching 
is indeed interpretation. It is the art of interpreting 
God to men just as an astronomer interprets the secret 
of the stars, or the artist the meaning of Nature, that we 
may know and love Nature. It enables the preacher to 
deal with texts either in the mass or fragmentarily ; to use 
texts that compose longer or shorter portions of Scripture, 
— perhaps a chapter at a time. And this is the beauty of 
this method, that the texts may be longer and embrace 
wider range, like the parables ; or extended figures, as in 
the 15th chapter of Luke, 1 Cor. ix. 24-27, Eph. vi. 
14-17 ; or narrative texts; or texts containing some im- 
portant subject fully treated, as 1 Cor. xiii. and Mark x. 
33 - 5°> where humility is the underlying lesson of the 
whole ; or meditative texts, as many of the Psalms, 
where the inner life is brought forth. The textual ser- 
mon honours the Word by keeping close to it and dwell- 
ing upon it. It develops the riches of the text, mines 



A Textual Sermon. 217 

into it and follows out its details as the miner follows the 
lode of a gold mine, — not, perhaps, running into a for- 
mal proposition and argument, but at the same time not 
disregarding the ground-truth of the passage {das imieres 
factum}, the essential unity of thought, the comprehen- 
sive generalization. Its subject may sometimes be de- 
fined by a general title, such as " The Centurion's 
Faith," "The Healing of the Blind Man," " The Golden 
Rule," "The New Commandment." Thus, the teach- 
ing is drawn from the heart of the Scriptures in an 
original and independent way, and its spiritual power 
educed, with nothing to intervene between the living 
Word and living hearts. Let us now take one of these 
subjects, "The Centurion's Faith," as an example. The 
whole narrative really forms the text; but the more 
specific passage in which the centurion's faith is com- 
prehended is in Matt. viii. 10: "When Jesus heard it, 
he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I 
say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in 
Israel." 

W T e find the parallel passage in Luke vii. 1-10. Here 
Jesus shows his beneficent divine personality in human- 
ity ; and it is a scene in a life-drama in which the pagan 
soldier, the Jews claiming to be Abraham's children and 
of the true faith, and the kingdom of Rome and the 
Kingdom of God pass before us. Should such an ani- 
mated portion of the Scriptures be treated in an abstract 
way? It is life, the life of the Son of God on earth, 
rolled out in vivid colors as no fresco or canvas could 
present. There is an opportunity to discuss the vital 
elements of faith, and the argument is from the less to 



218 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

the greater, — if I, a subordinate who know how to obey, 
am obeyed, how much more the Lord of all should be 
trusted and obeyed ? And then the conclusion that the 
slave was healed in the same hour in which Jesus spoke 
the word through his divine power, or the idea that the 
personal presence of Christ was not needed for effecting 
the cure desired, and that the Redeemer could heal 
the servant with a word {dirk Xdyw) , — not " speak the 
word," but "command byword" merely, — this shows 
a faith above that of the senses. It betokens a spiritual 
susceptibility which the Jews, with all their advantages, 
had not shown. It is a privilege indeed to be born 
in a Christian land and house, — we Christians, as it 
were, now take the place of ancient Israel ; but many 
who are born in a Christian land are put to shame by 
ancient Romans and modern heathens. Such spiritual 
members indeed of the " true Israel" are scattered 
everywhere. Evidently the centurion represents the 
Gentile element of the world, and the Jews the " chil- 
dren of the kingdom ; " and yet it is said, " I will call 
them my people, which were not my people ; and her be- 
loved, which was not beloved." Thus we obtain the cor- 
rect idea of a spiritual kingdom on earth, even as one has 
said that " the external participation in the visibly and 
also outwardly realized kingdom of God necessarily pre- 
supposes an internal foundation of it in the spirit," and 
the centurion's faith is an example and earnest of this 
faith by which the Gentiles should surpass Israel. 

The preacher would have to show in the sermon, by 
a close textual study of the whole narrative outward and 
inward, in what respects the centurion's faith was supe- 



A Textual Sermon. 219 

rior to the faith of the Jews, so that Jesus marvelled 
thereat. 

I. In its spirituality. It gave evidence of spiritual 
susceptibility which the Jews with all their knowledge 
did not have. 

1. Its spirituality proved by its humility. " Blessed 
are the poor in spirit." The centurion, in the spirit of 
faith, said : " Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst 
come under my roof; " and in a spirit of thoughtful 
humility he did not come to Christ, but sent the elders. 

2. Its spirituality proved by its love. The earnest 
desire for the servant's welfare and the benevolent spirit 
toward the Jews in building them a synagogue show this. 

3. Its spirituality proved by its implicit trust in 
Christ's divine nature, mission, and power. " Command 
by a word," — no personal presence, no sensible me- 
dium desired. Here was an entire readiness to accept 
Christ in his highest claims as Redeemer and Lord ; 
which was not seen in the Jews. 

II. In its effectiveness. The reality of the centurion's 
faith was shown by its power, — by its actually obtaining 
the object it sought, namely, the life of the servant. 
" As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee." In all 
these respects the genuineness and superiority of the cen- 
turion's faith was demonstrated. 

I will give two plans of the treatment of the same text 
by eminent preachers, the first being that of F. \V. 
Robertson : but how meagre this mere framework un- 
clothed of the flesh, life, and spirit that pulses and glows 
in the completed sermon ! 

In his introduction, he says that Christ's admiration 



220 Horce Homileticcz. 

did not fasten on the centurion's benevolence or perse- 
verance, or anything but his faith. The New Testament 
gives special dignity to faith. By faith we are justified \ 
mountains of difficulty are removed by faith; faith ap- 
propriates heaven. 

Faith, as a theological term, is rarely used in every- 
day matters, and hence its meaning is obscured ; but 
faith is no strange new power, but the same principle 
we live on daily. We trust our senses ; we trust men : 
battles are fought on the information of a spy \ mer- 
chants trust their captains. 

Such, too, is religious faith. We trust in probabilities. 
We cannot prove God's existence. Faith decides the 
question of probability. Faith ventures on God's side, 
upon the guarantee of something that makes the thing 
seem right. 

I. The faith which was commended. 

II. The cause of the commendation. 
I. Faith commended. (i) Evidence of its exist- 
ence in the hardness of unbelief having been taken from 
the centurion's mind ; and added to this is his kind- 
ness, " building a synagogue," "caring for our nation." 
(2) Evidence in his humility. " Lord, I am not worthy," 
etc. This was either the result of his faith or one with 
it, since the spirit of proud independence does not 
consist with faith. Worldly ideas are, indeed, quite 
different ; for young men now are taught to be inde- 
pendent. True religion frees us from independence 
on wrong things, powers, and lusts, but makes us de- 
pendent on right things, persons, and God. (3) Evi- 
dence in his belief in an invisible living will. " Speak 



A Textual Sermon. 221 

the word only." He did not rely merely upon his 
senses ; he asked not for Christ's presence, but only for 
an exercise of his will. He did not ask Christ to 
operate, like a physician, through the laws of nature, 
but looked to him as the Lord of life. He felt that 
the Cause of causes is a person. He learned this 
through his own profession. The argument ran thus : 
If the command of will wins the obedience of my ser- 
vants, then by thy will the obedience of the spirits of 
sickness and health is secured. He looked on the uni- 
verse with a soldier's eye. To him the world was a 
camp of organized forces in which authority was para- 
mount. Law was to him the expression of a personal 
will. The soldier through law read a personal will ; and 
so each profession teaches some religious truth. 

II. The causes of the astonishment. (1) The cen- 
turion was a Gentile ; therefore unlikely to know revealed 
truth. (2) He was a soldier; therefore exposed to 
recklessness, idleness, and sensuality. 

The Saviour's comment is on the advantage of disad- 
vantages. u Many shall come from the East," etc. Some 
turn their disadvantages to good account. The princi- 
pal remark with which Robertson closes is that this 
narrative testifies to the perfect humanity of Christ. He 
li marvelled " with genuine wonder. He had not ex- 
pected to find such faith. The Saviour increased in 
wisdom at he grew in stature. In all matters of eternal 
truth his knowledge was absolute ; but in matters of 
earthly wisdom, Robertson thinks, his knowledge was 
modified like ours by experience. If we disbelieve this, 
we lose the humanity of Christ, and we lose the Saviour. 



222 Horcz Homileticce. 

His was a perfect human life. " If we do not love him 
as a brother, we cannot realize him as a Saviour." 

The second plan from the German of Dr. C. Palmer is 
briefly this : — 

For theme, What is the faith which gave such satis- 
faction to the Lord and which he did not find in Israel? 
(i) It is a faith which springs from humility ("Lord, 
I am not worthy"). The man, according to Luke's 
testimony, had done much good to the Jews, yet he 
holds himself lowly in the presence of Christ. Faith 
can alone be where Christ is all in all. 

(2) It is a faith in which love is joined. Other 
rulers think that something is lost from their dignity if 
they condescend to give a friendly word or look to their 
inferiors ; but he sent a special request to the Redeemer 
solely on account of his servant. Some parents,, even, 
are so hard that any sacrifice for a child is too much for 
them ; but he exercises this careful painstaking for a 
servant. Without such love faith could not exist. 

(3) It is a faith which strives for the highest gift and 
endeavours to appropriate it. It would have been a great 
thing if the Lord had himself gone to the bedside of the 
sick servant, and so had healed him ; but the centurion 
asks a much greater thing of the Lord, because he judges 
that as he himself executed his will through others simply 
by a word, without putting his own hand to the work, 
so much more this power, and this power in the highest 
degree, of executing by a word, belonged to the Lord. 
It is thus a quality of true faith that it desires not only 
the little gift, but that it stretches out the hands for the 
full and perfect gift. 



A Lecture. 223 



How would you treat a lecture ? What are the 
essential characteristics of a lecture ? 
A lecture is more exclusively an instructive discussion 
of any subject of religious knowledge, than a sermon. 
A sermon should never, therefore, be a lecture, nor a lec- 
ture a sermon. It is from confusing this distinction that 
sermons have acquired their reputation for dulness. The 
ground idea of a lecture is instruction. It is teaching, or 
imparting knowledge. It runs on a smooth level of 
plain talk respecting things more or less important in the 
religious life, — truths, facts, duties that require some 
explanation and clearing up, and that give an opportunity 
for suggestions upon many matters of considerable inter- 
est, but not perhaps of the profoundest or most vital 
nature. While a sermon should always contain this noble 
element of instruction, it should have, and aim for, a great 
deal more than this. From the fact that some preachers 
are only lecturers conveying truth in dry, intellectual and 
scientific form without earnestness, without the pressing 
sense of an office involving eternal responsibility, — in- 
volving the personal character and spirit of the preacher 
and his everlasting love and union with Christ the Word, 
— it is for this reason that topical preaching, which more 
nearly resembles lecturing than any other style of ser- 
mon, is not the highest order of preaching, and is not 
necessarily spiritual, biblical, or even moral. It may be, 
and often is all these, but it is essentially theme-preach- 
ing rather than faith-preaching, and it draws its power 
from a human subject rather than from the living Word. 

But the lecture has its place. The good custom of 
week-day lectures consisting of running expositions upon 



224 Horce Homileticcz. 



the Scriptures — like Chalmers' lectures on Romans — 
has served a useful purpose in the churches. Carried to 
an extreme, the lecture has sometimes fallen into a 
wearisome track, and the interminable courses of serial 
lectures upon the Apocalypse, or the Minor Prophets, or 
the Assembly's catechism, or the Book of Common 
Prayer, or Church Polity, or the Reformation, or the 
Jewish church, or the characters of the Bible, or the 
canon of Scripture, or even the Divine Attributes, — 
some of them begun and not ended, — have become, after 
a time, a kind of funeral march, diminishing to the 
vanishing point of death. Lectures are to teach, but 
in a free way ; and in view of the fact that in an age like 
this where there are so many books and such multiplied 
sources of instruction even upon religious themes, nothing 
can hold the popular mind long, and its craving for what 
is new while it should be chastened cannot be repressed. 
The condition of things must have been vastly different 
when Chrysostom lectured in running commentary upon 
the whole Bible, or when in earlier New England times 
preachers carried triumphantly to the end complete 
courses of lectures upon Systematic Theology. 

The lecture, therefore, whether on a week-day evening, 
or Sunday afternoon and evening, should be varied, 
should be brief, should not be too scholastic, while it 
may and should give the results of thorough scholarship, — 
bringing forth things new and old, — should not promise 
too much nor lay out too big a plan, while at the same 
time it may pursue a thoughtful and comprehensive plan 
and stick to it, at least so long as healthy enthusiasm can 
be sustained. Where there are indications of weariness, 



A Lecture, 225 



and people do not attend for trivial reasons, it does not 
require great sagacity in the preacher to alter his method 
and to substitute another and fresher subject : or. better 
still, preach a sermon addressed to conscience and he;::. 
or hold a purely devotional service, where prayer is 
changed to lecture and the Great Teacher takes the 
place of the human one. 

::y preachers have found that lectures upon the 
harmony of the Gospels, or the life of Christ pure and 
simple, especially in the winter season, when the atten- 
tion can be concentrated, are far the most fruitful of all 
in building up the people in the spiritual life, and often- 
times in pouring in upon souls oppressed and darkened 
by earthly cares a divine light of loftier hope and peace 
and love, as the flock of old followed the Good Shep- 
herd whithersoever he led them, while listening to 
his voice and feeding from his hand. In this connec- 
tion, the subject of expositor}' preaching might claim a 
word, whether it be in the pulpit on Sunday or in the 
week-day lecture. Exposition is mainly exegesis, but 
not of a purely philologic kind : the lecture or sermon 
derived from it should be a vigorous generalization that 
gathers into it all the essence and juices oi the text, its 
relations to kindred truths, the whole course of its argu- 
ment, the practical lessons it teaches, summarizing it 
and catching and imparting its original spirit, so that it 
utters its voice with a present living power. If hard 
work is not put into expository preaching, it is the very 
poorest of all. It runs to the weakest and thinnest dilu- 
tion. The difficulty to be guarded against is going over 
the ground too minutely and slowly. An apostolic epis- 



226 Horcz Homileticcz. 

tie, for example, was a letter addressed to a church and 
was read as one letter, — it should not take a year to go 
through it. Let condensation be studied. The Epistle 
to the Romans has been the Sebastopol of young minis- 
ters fresh from seminary teaching ; but though filled with 
weighty thoughts and profound with spiritual life, it is a 
fiery and continuous argument hastening ad eventum like 
a Philippic of Demosthenes, even if interrupted with 
episodes of emotion and flights of inspiration. If ana- 
lyzed too microscopically and pottered over, the general 
sweep and current of the argument is lost. Exposition, 
therefore, should be made interesting as well as instruc- 
tive and not a mere class- teaching, for the preacher is 
more than a lecturer. He nourishes the life of his flock, 
arouses and cultivates their devotional affections, pro- 
motes their benevolent activity, represses their selfishness 
of living, and leads them into the strength and joy of a 
higher life in Christ. And I am led to say in closing, 
that there is one New England church service of the 
" Preparatory Lecture " that has happily survived, and 
may be still employed by the minister with great and 
good effect. While it is an occasion for clearly instruct- 
ing the people in regard to the origin, history, and nature 
of the rite of the Lord's Supper, it is especially adapted 
to awaken and deepen the spiritual life of the Church by 
drawing it nearer to the head-spring, — the personal love 
and loyalty to the Saviour. The spirit of love which is 
the central impelling power of Christian duty, is stirred 
in a lively manner, and the heart is brought into a con- 
dition of immediate preparation to meet the Lord, taking 
it out of the earthly and bringing it into the heavenly 



Theme and Seope of Preaching. 227 

state. This service is neither a technical sermon nor a 
technical lecture, but rather a close and familiar talking 
with and about Christ, even as the disciples met him at 
the institution of the Supper, as recorded in the last 
chapters of John's Gospel, and after his resurrection, 
when he suddenly appeared among them at the break- 
ing of the bread. 

/ constantly meet with men who say, " Preach the 
gospel, pure and simple ; preach salvation, notli- 
i?ig more nor less " — ministers, I mean ; they 
preach repentance and salvation in midsummer as 
well as midwinter. One never hears any tiling 
else than just this, " Believe and be saved!' Are 
they right ? Should the bulk of our preaching 
be 07i the Atonement ? 

If preaching is essential for the spread of the gospel 
and for the salvation of men, then the doctrines of re- 
pentance and faith cannot be too earnestly or constantly 
preached. The question is not now, are these truths 
preached too much, but are they preached enough? 
Instead of being the theme of the pulpit " in mid- 
summer as well as midwinter," where, indeed, do culti- 
vated audiences in our large cities have their sins set in 
array against them as did those who flocked out of the 
cities to listen to John the Baptist, and hear a sermon 
" pure and simple " on repentance ? Yet repentance is 
the initial act of the religious life. It is set forth in the 
New Testament as the entrance act, the essential condi- 
tion of the acceptance in the heart of Christian faith. 



228 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

It implies a true and profound sense of sin and of its 
fatal power, from which the gospel was sent to deliver 
us. It rings on every page of the new evangel of life 
and hope in Jesus Christ ; and the parable of the Prodi- 
gal Son, spoken by our Lord, has its depth and pathos 
in the truth that sin is repented of and forsaken be- 
cause of the fatherly love of God. The first preachers 
of the gospel cried : " Repent, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand ; " " Bring forth therefore fruits meet 
for repentance ; " " Repent and be baptized, every one 
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins ; " 
"Him hath God exalted for to give repentance to 
Israel;" "God also to the Gentiles hath granted 
repentance to life ; " " Having commanded all men 
everywhere to repent;" "And testifying to the Greeks 
repentance towards God ; " "If God, peradventure, will 
grant them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth." 
I call to mind my surprise when taking up to read the 
bulky volumes of Systematic Theology, published some 
years since by one of the most eminent teachers of the- 
ology in America, and what seemed a most learned and 
authoritative work, and not finding in the index, and 
hardly in the whole of these volumes, the word " repen- 
tance," much less any account or discussion of this fun- 
damental truth of our holy religion. But, whatever 
else we learn or learn to do, we must become as little 
children before entering the kingdom of heaven. The 
will, the basis of selfhood and character in man, must 
be actually moved toward God and the good. Does not 
a sinful heart now need true repentance and real forsak- 
ing of its sins for the realization of eternal life promised 



Theme and Scope of Preaching. 229 

by Christ in the gospel, as much as it did when Christ 
personally offered men the forgiveness of God through 
trusting to his word and work for them ? Where is unre- 
pented and unforsaken sin spoken of in the New Testa- 
ment as being carried into that pure kingdom which faith 
opens to true believers ? Is not repentance the first step to 
the " righteousness by faith," which is the crown of glory 
of that new kingdom won by Christ's atoning sacrifice ? Is 
not repentance truly a necessary part or effect of faith 
itself, and which is awakened in the sinful heart by the 
stirrings of confidence in One who is able to take away 
the sin it deeply feels and deplores? The answer of 
Christ to the young man who came to him, asking how he 
might obtain eternal life, shows the deep-reaching quality 
of this principle, and that the possession of all things else 
could not make up for an absolute forsaking of sin and 
self, so that there might be a sincere consecration to the 
Saviour. Can there, then, be too much or too earnest 
preaching of the vital duty of repentance, especially in a 
period of the world when sin has grown indurated, when 
the selfishness and atheism of the human soul are con- 
firmed by long custom and resistance to the truth ; when 
the covetousness and impurity of Christian lands is tenfold 
more inexcusable than the same vices in those pagan lands 
to which Christianity first came \ when a refined mate- 
rialism, cold and unassailable, respectable in external show 
and life, and no longer repulsively animalistic, has taken 
the place of a more open opposition to Christian faith ? In 
fact, a return to the plainest preaching of repentance and 
faith for salvation as in Christ's time, and in the spirit of 
apostolic preaching, arousing in deadened hearts a lively 



230 Horcz Homileticcz. 

sense of sin and of the need of God to help them, 
would be the greatest boon and the greatest reform that 
could visit the modern pulpit. We should hear a sound 
of the moving of new spiritual life. Such a generic 
truth as repentance, which is a first fact in religious 
life, cannot ever grow old or unprofitable so long as 
there is any sin in the human heart to be sorrowed over 
and forsaken by him who would set his face toward God, 
following the voice and laying hold of the aid stretched 
out in the gospel of Christ's salvation. 

Yet repentance and faith are not all. They are the 
first things, — the germinal conditions of spiritual exist- 
ence ; but we are told to add to our faith knowledge, 
virtue, temperance, holiness, godliness, brotherly love, 
charity, and all glorious and divine qualities of a fully- 
developed Christlike life. Christ being formed in us the 
hope of glory, from him are to be unfolded the beauties 
and forces that are wrapped up in his infinite nature 
and perfection, so that we " shall neither be barren nor 
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
As regards theology in its relation to preaching, to which 
the question we are treating has reference, I have no 
hesitation in saying that there needs to be some read- 
justment of ideas, looking both back and forward, both 
to original sources of power and to future development 
of the fuller riches of the Word of God, — the blessed 
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is called the 
" New Theology " (although Maurice, its chief promoter, 
if not originator, would not have acknowledged the name 
as if indicating something novel and phenomenal), if it 
has done no other good, has assuredly widened the 



Theme and Scope of Preaching. 231 

scope of modern preaching by finding God in all things : 
by finding his gracious gospel of love not only in the 
Bible but in Nature and the human soul ; by searching 
the Scriptures with a freer and more reasonable spirit. 
not imposing dogma upon the Scriptures, but drawing 
the truth or dogma from them : by liberating truth from 
merely prescriptive authority and bringing it nearer to 
the simple Christian consciousness of the ages. If the 
u gospel ,? be indeed Christ in all his relations to human- 
ity, then to "preach the gospel " opens to us a view of 
what preaching is, so comprehensive that no minister, 
whoever he be, nor any other man in all his life of 
active thought and effort in doing good, can even survey 
its extent, and, much less, compass its requirements. 
Preaching in this aspect becomes an idea or duty which 
embraces a far broader field than is conceived of by 
those who hold a theology based upon a scheme of 
human logic, which, though admitting into it truth 
enough to save, cramps the living truth, and does not 
allow it space to develop naturally, as if the human 
could contain and set limitations to the divine ! There 
is also a moral wrong done. Christ, by His spirit, can- 
not lead on a mind into higher truth that will not learn 
anything more from the Scriptures or Nature or any 
other source than it has already learned or thinks it has. 
Does it yet know the great doctrine of the Atonement? 
Has it learned its truth by learning and subscribing to 
the words of its theological formula, adjusted, perhaps, 
mainly to a thoroughly objective plan of divine govern- 
ment? Does it know its profounder depths of spiritual 
knowledge and love ? Has it exhausted its moral reaches 



232 Horce Homileticce. 

of redeeming power, as applied not only to the individ- 
ual soul but to society and the race ? When we speak 
of the bulk of our preaching being upon the Atonement, 
do we know what this infinite truth of the incarnation 
and sacrifice of Christ, the second Adam, comprehends 
in the spiritual renovation of humanity, going deeper in 
its life-giving influences than did the death-giving sin of 
the first Adam? The Word became flesh. God made 
a revelation of Himself in the person and work of Christ, 
and this manifestation of the nature of God in a human 
person, exhibiting all the possible perfections of human 
character and showing what the divine is in human na- 
ture, setting before us a moral ideal of divine love in 
human life, work, self-sacrifice, word, thought, tempta- 
tion, joy and sorrow, citizenship and sonship, — this 
offers an inexhaustible field of preaching. Opportunity 
is given of " unlimited spiritual progress " on this line of 
the deeper and deeper study of Christ, of the " God- 
head disclosed in perfect manhood," of the manifesta- 
tions of divine love in a human person, of the union of 
Christ with and his dwelling in every soul, and of the work- 
ings of the Holy Spirit, sent forth by Christ into men to 
give them new life and to redeem them into the moral 
image of God. 

God has also revealed Himself in Nature and the human 
reason. By a better class of thinkers, the natural uni- 
verse is not only the creation but the manifestation of 
God, or expression of His mind, even as a human work 
of art is an expression of the author's mind and char- 
acter, — nay more, is full of the inhabitation of the 
Divine Spirit ; and it is therefore to be especially studied 



Theme and Scope of Preaching. 233 

by him who would teach men divine things. There has 
been in the realm of the Spirit's higher manifestation, or 
the Church, certainly a better movement in theology in 
these later times, dating back perhaps to the time of 
Schleiermacher \ which, with many human errors, vaga- 
ries, and audacities, has undeniably enlarged thought, 
has brought theology more into harmony with reason, 
and, above all, has recognized in Nature and man more 
of the divine, so that all things God has made teach 
God and are essentially religious, and, instead of expelling 
God from His own universe has joyfully and adoringly 
seen Him in all things, above all, in man. Man is a 
child of God. Man is to be regarded above all in this 
aspect. Man's sin even clinging to him so close that it 
becomes, as it were, his second nature, does not, after 
all, belong to him, is alien from him, is not his true 
nature. The root of that is divine. There is that in 
man which is above Nature, and which cannot be referred 
to the working of natural laws, but which is supernatural 
and lays hold of God. The humanity which is truly 
perfect, as in our Lord Jesus Christ, who was the Ideal 
Man, is divine. 

This moral perfection of humanity in Christ is one of 
the most inspiring themes for the preacher, of any in the 
New Testament. The broad field of Christian ethics, 
which represents the application of the principle of 
Christian love, or the spirit of Christ, to human conduct, 
and which is, therefore, as wide and varied as are the 
circumstances of human life and human society, and 
which, comparatively speaking, is a fresh field of instruc- 
tion from the pulpit, is opened to the preacher of truth 



234 Horcz Hotnileticcz. 

and righteousness, so that " only believe," when brought 
to the test of actual Christian duty, becomes a phrase of 
the deepest import, and means the application of Chris- 
tian faith to the real life, walk, and conversation of the 
believer, who is upheld by a higher power, and serves a 
purer love. The preacher, then, in his study of humanity, 
may constantly find and interpret the divine. He may 
be a prophet of God to the human soul. He may dis- 
cover a deeper spiritual philosophy in the history of man 
than he has been accustomed to do. He may discover 
more and more of God. The truly intelligent preacher, 
though he may detect in them imperfections, false opin- 
ions, deplorable errors, will at the same time cherish no 
contempt for human philosophy, science, art, or literature, 
but will win from their thoughtful and loving study deeper 
conceptions of the powers of the human soul, broader 
views of life and duty, richer thoughts for pulpit instruc- 
tion, truer views of Christ as the perfect man, and hum- 
bler views of himself and his people, as imperfect and 
sinful men, needing repentance and thorough cleansing 
through Christ's spiritual work and sacrifice ; and he 
need never complain of the limited scope of the preach- 
er's vocation, which not only interprets " the mind of 
Christ " in relation to God and the eternal things of his 
kingdom of faith and love, but in relation to man and 
his human life, as manifesting the indwelling power and 
workings of the Spirit of God. Christianity is not an 
abstract truth, and does not give us specific rules of 
human conduct that may be learned like the precepts of 
a book, and exhausted ; but it is a life developed from 
the continual application of the central principle of love ; 



Theme and Scope of Preaching. 235 

and therefore it requires the constant study of a prayer- 
ful and thoughtful spirit which lives upon God and His 
Word, and draws new light and truth from eternal 
sources. 

The true scope of preaching is a subject by itself. It 
would require a lengthy discussion to follow out only a 
few points belonging to the legitimate aim of preaching, 
such as instruction in truth, persuasion that leads to con- 
version and a Christian life, edification in holy character 
and the imitation of Christ, consolation under the suffer- 
ings and woes of life ; but I have thus far only attempted 
to show that in the simplest preaching of the gospel of 
repentance and faith for salvation, there is an exhaust- 
less scope in the spiritual application of these practical 
Christian truths ; and when we add to this, the vast fields 
of the divine manifestation in creation, in the universe 
and the human mind, where the preacher, as the inter- 
preter of God, is permitted to draw from all these founts 
of divine knowledge, he should surely not be at a loss for 
material, or be confined to the iteration of human propo- 
sitions out of which the life may have fled. Christ is the 
life, and from him spring streams of living waters that 
shall never dry up, and that shall never fail to satisfy the 
wants of the human soul and give it eternal life. He 
only may complain of the narrow scope of preaching 
and of the preacher's calling who has sounded the 
depths of but one simple and familiar text : " Let him 
know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error 
of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide 
a multitude of sins." 



236 Horcz Homileticcz. 

What is the best style for the pulpit ? 
Cicero's words, " Stilus optimus et p?-cestantissi?nus di- 

cendi effectoi' ac magister" still hold good, and he who 
makes constant use of writing tends thereby to increase 
his speaking capacity, and undergoes a mental training 
which is a most excellent modeller and teacher of 
oratory. This, to be sure, is to be taken with condi- 
tions, as, for instance, that speaking is speaking and not 
writing ; that a speech comes from a more interior part 
of a man than a formal essay ; that speech is more per- 
sonal than simple writing, and is aimed more directly to 
move the mind and sway the will by thoughts taken out 
of their abstract relations and wrought into forms calcu- 
lated to produce moral sympathy and conviction. A 
preacher's duty is not put into his pen and paper. It 
ends in hearts, not in sermons. It is written in living 
characters. As another modification, it is necessary also 
for a preacher not to confine himself entirely to writing, 
not to be a slave to his writing-desk, but to mingle speak- 
ing with writing, to cultivate his power of oratory and of 
addressing souls without the hindering process of written 
sermons. Conditions such as these being fulfilled, writ- 
ing may be said to be of the utmost value to a preacher, 
and to be almost essential for the forming of a clear, for- 
cible style. He who writes out his thoughts is obliged 
to pay some attention to his style ; and he who never 
writes out his sermons, if he do not specially guard against 
this tendency, will be in danger of losing his power of 
accurate speaking. 

Style, however, is something that cannot entirely be 
learned. John Bunyan and General Grant never learnecj 



Style. 237 

it by the study of rhetoric or the classics. It is a subtle 
quality belonging to the man, and depends upon his 
whole personality, character and spirit, — upon the 
thousand inner and occult facts of being which make 
him different from other beings. It is the man's spiritual 
flavour. Some cannot help having a vulgar style, for the 
vulgarity is in them. Styles vary as temper and char- 
acter vary. Some styles are bloodless like a starved 
soul. Some are dry as of a nature desiccated of all the 
juices of sensibility and sympathy. For a man to enrich 
his style he must enrich himself. To give it nobility he 
must become ennobled. He must deepen the sources 
of his intelligence, he must elevate his tastes, he must 
enlarge and transform his moral affections. Thunder 
does not come out of a reed. A man must be strong 
to have a strong style. He must reinforce the weak 
sides of his nature and chasten the passionate and bru- 
tal. What is dark in him must become luminous, and 
what is low be raised to the height both of his argument 
and his aim. Thus, there are subjective sources of style 
which are difficult to describe, and are inherent in the 
nature as resultant of a man's inherited traits, moral 
sympathies, bent of character, culture, and breeding. 
Bismarck's style of speaking is said to be as curiously 
involved and confused at times as that of Oliver Crom- 
well, yet it embodies in this complexity of form a 
potential character that evolves amid its cloudy folds 
the electric thunderbolt. These native or constitutional 
traits of style may be considerably modified and regu- 
lated by rhetorical training, but cannot be wholly done 
away, nor should they be where they are good. 



238 Horcz Homileticcz. 

There are also certain negative excellences of style, which 
lie mostly on the outside, and that belong necessarily to 
all good writing, like grammatical correctness, accuracy in 
the use of words, propriety, method, good taste, conden- 
sation, that must be learned as any art is learned, and 
that belong to the very science of language, in which one 
may be perfecting himself all his life. And, perhaps, the 
best rule here is to write much, if one only write care- 
fully. Great writers, as a general rule, have come to 
their effective style by immense toil, by innumerable 
defeats and disappointments, by endless corrections and 
polishings, by study of good models without servile copy- 
ing, by trying the edge of their minds on hard subjects, 
by analyzing men, by observing the subtle laws of mind 
in persuasion, by indomitable trial, conflict, and suffering ; 
and then, there is something more inimitable still in 
themselves, some inborn force and genial power that is 
their own and superior to all these things and all exter- 
nal aids, which enables them to win a style that they no 
longer trouble themselves about any more than about 
the pitch of their voice, or their looks, or their gait, but 
which becomes the facile instrument of their thought, the 
strongest or most exquisite. 

As to the best style, whether in the pulpit or out of it, 
while there are minor elements not to be overlooked, 
there are three qualities of a good style which are of the 
utmost importance, namely, plainness, individuality, and 
unconsciousness. 

The first of these — plainness — is essential to every good 
style. That which can be understood and rests on fact is a 
fundamental quality. Simple fact stated in simplest words, 



Style. 239 

with no effort to enhance it. lies at the base of force in 
style. This is body. This is reality. This makes the 
powerful charm of the style of the period of Swift, coarse 
as it was sometimes and which was the expression of the 
spirit of that age, and which has been imitated success- 
fully by Thackeray. This is plain, idiomatic English or 
Anglo-Saxon. Here we stand on solid English soil of 
the manliest and richest language ever known, the lan- 
guage of the English Bible, and which, though widely com- 
posite as hardly any other language ever was, and some of 
its elements are like the despised drift-wood of the wild 
sea on which its piratical authors sailed, is nevertheless 
one and homogeneous, and is as capable of the most ener- 
getic and straightforward treatment of practical subjects, 
as of giving expression to the loftiest spiritual contem- 
plations of the soul, and the most delicate and tender 
shadings of the imagination and emotions. It is the 
language both of action and feeling. But, as in Latin, 
for example, in Caesar's Commentaries, its chief strength 
is its plain significance. It is business-like and wastes 
no time on unimportant things. It says what it wishes 
to say, and that is all. Though of a more artistic sort, 
the Greek idea of ■•form.'' which was at the bottom of 
all the powerful art of Greece, its architecture and sculpt- 
ure, illustrates this plain, factual simplicity of style, where 
everything tells for what it is, where all is reduced to pure 
reality, where there is nothing in excess. It would be a 
good thing for the American pulpit if it could rid itself 
of redundancy and fine writing, of all that is unessential, 
and come down to matter of fact, at the same time not 
descending to absolute lowness of style. There is, I 



240 Horcz Homileticcz. 

think, already an advance in this direction. Preachers 
write better now than they did fifty, or even twenty-five, 
years ago. They write with more force and clearness. 
There is a less ambitious style. Young preachers are 
not so artificial, but more manly and direct. They do 
not feel that it is necessary to be eloquent every time 
they preach, but are satisfied to say simply what is in 
their minds and hearts. The manner is far less stilted, 
learned, and poetic. Not that poetry should be banished 
from the pulpit, not that the imagination should be re- 
pressed, but that it should be rather the poetry of truth 
and feeling than of words ; that what one says on the 
sublimest themes should be said in the plainest way, and 
that the thought should have its full force without being 
hampered by words ; that the words should fit the thought 
exactly, even as the body the spirit. Let young preachers 
fight it out on this line all summer, till the stoutest strong- 
hold surrenders. 

Another great secret of style is individuality, — that 
the style should be one's own, and not another's. The 
magnetic power of style lies in its genuineness, in which 
the author lets us see himself, takes us into his soul's 
experience without artifice or deceit, and what he says 
comes from his inmost self and not from a conventional 
habit of thinking. His ideal is in himself. He lets us 
have his honest thought. His style interprets his mind 
and not some one's mind whose philosophy or theology 
he has espoused. Young writers and preachers often 
begin by adopting the style of a favourite author or 
preacher, and it needs reflex action of the mind to bring 
it back once more to a natural style. Through art one 



Style. 241 

comes to nature. One must become aware of his not 
being himself, and then by a strong effort of will he must 
come to the use of a style in which he is himself and not 
another. Therefore, he should try to write and speak 
just as he would talk when roused to do his best, and he 
will thus acquire a genuine manly style, and will find that 
ten honest words out of his own head and heart are more 
effective than ten times as many words of the greatest 
preacher or writer of the world. Let us be content to 
quote Emerson fairly now and then, but let us not at- 
tempt to write like him. In preaching, especially, sin- 
cerity and conviction carry the day. It is wonderful 
what influence a man has who only speaks what he be- 
lieves, whose utterances, however homely and simple, 
are the convictions of his heart. If you give the best 
you have to the people, that is all they can ask or will 
desire. Launch forth into the deep ! was the command 
of Christ to his disciples, and the mighty power and the 
miracle that accompanied the act of obedience to the 
divine voice, tell us that simply to speak Christ's word 
and obey him as his ministers, is better than human 
learning, skill, or eloquence. 

The last element is unconsciousness. There cannot be 
much that is great which is consciously so. What we tell 
others that we ourselves think is great they will laugh at. 
The greatest speech I, for one, ever heard, was made by 
a plain man in war-time, who did not know that he was 
speaking eloquently, but totally forgot himself, gave him- 
self to his cause, and his country and freedom spoke 
through him. St. Paul forgot himself while preaching 
Christ. He was an instrument of divine love. So was 

16 



242 Horcz H mile tic cz. 

Chrysostom, so was Savonarola, so was Whitefield, so was 
Robertson, thoughtful and subjective as was his manner 
of preaching. The subject was blended in the object. 
To love God is the only way to know Him and to teach 
Him. Love destroys self, and creates that unconscious- 
ness out of which all that is noble is evolved. Love is 
the play-movement of the mind in which everything 
really great is done. The greatest preachers, amid their 
distress, their self-martyrdom, and often-times agony of 
spirit, have still preached with joy and freedom. It has 
been their supreme delight to lose themselves, and to let 
Christ speak through them his words of everlasting life 
and power. 

1. Will y on give the best method of preparing ser- 
mons, especially with reference to the use of books, 
commentaries, sermons, etc., tip on the theme in 
hand ? How much and how should they be 
used ? 

2. How much may one use another's thought 
without plagiarism, and without dwarfing him- 
self? 

3. What course of study would you recommend to a 
young minister, in order to develop and enlarge 
his mind? Is general reading in a special line 
best suited for this purpose ? 

These questions embody an important subject, — the 
intellectual life of the minister. To a man of noble as- 
piration the intellectual side of the ministry offers great 



Intellectual Preparation. 243 

attractions. As it deals in mind, it must almost always 
be that, in Shakespeare's words, 

t; nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyers hand." 

The shrewd temptation of intellectual men, however, is 
to turn the ministry wholly into a matter of mind, to 
make a sermon the development of an idea only, — an 
argument or a doctrine ending entirely in the reason, — 
to resolve all into logic, and to lose that moral earnest- 
ness, that spiritual purpose, which rises higher than the 
intellect, and strives for men's salvation in their actual 
restoration to God's love and obedience. To preach in 
order to evolve a thought merely, however clearly and 
brilliantly, to establish a proposition, to make our state- 
ment good, to save ourselves, so to speak, is not the prime 
work of a sermon ; but only when we save others, when 
we lodge the truth in them, when we bring our hearers 
out from darkness to light and from the power of Satan 
unto God, does the sermon become a sermon and show 
its power. The intellectual aim in preaching, high as it 
is, — and no one can hold a higher conception of it than 
I do, — has got to be modified. It is not the highest 
measure of power in the pulpit. I listened, not long 
since, to a finely-written and thoughtful discourse, 
preached by a minister of reputation, who was, neverthe- 
less, a stranger to me ; but there was not a discernible 
purpose or current of remark in it which showed that it 
was addressed to another person ! it was wholly intro- 
spective ; it might have been delivered as a monologue, 
without a single hearer ; it did not reach forth a tentacle 



244 Horcz Homileticce. 

of desire to another mind or heart ; the speaker himself 
stood like a post, without feeling or action ; he appar- 
ently did not know or care that there was an audience 
before him ; he had not even the inspiration of a pagan 
prophet on a tripod, but seemed as a dead man lifted up 
in the pulpit, and gifted with vocal power for half an 
hour, and then the voice ceased. Is this the way to 
preach the Gospel of love and life, let Plato even be the 
speaker? With his admirable clearness and fulness of 
thought, he should, somehow, have done something with 
his sermon for the good of men. If the desire were in 
him, it should show itself. To speak is in order to con- 
vince. There must be the love of men in the speaker, 
the resolve to save men by preaching. Preaching is the 
communication of life. Yet the intellectual element is 
essential. Let us have not less but more of it in our 
preaching, — I mean, let the whole mind be thoroughly 
aroused and filled with a higher purpose for this great 
work. The minister, above all, should not be a narrow 
man, since he is the interpreter to humanity of the divine 
in its fulness. But ministers, like others, may be narrow 
men, if they yield their minds to the complete bondage 
of human systems. While these systems, containing 
much that is true, are so rigidly formulated that they 
admit of no enlargement or modification, they retard in- 
tellectual growth, not allowing the following on and out 
where truth, and above all the Spirit of God may carry, 
and which, therefore, prevent good men, who shut them- 
selves up in them, from being the best instructors or 
educators. If ministers do not cultivate the scientific 
mind, nor keep abreast of the age intellectually, but 



Intellectual Preparation. 245 

submit implicitly to human authority, they must cease to 
be leaders in the discovery and development of truth. 
Indeed, it is almost a simple thing to say, that preachers 
should know more now than they once knew, because 
their audiences are better educated, and knowledge is 
more widely diffused. They should also necessarily be 
men of large intelligence, since the kingdom of truth is 
one, and all that partakes of the nature of truth springs 
from a common centre. The most insignificant physical 
fact has a relation to and a bearing upon the highest 
spiritual truth, and upon divine doctrine itself. 

The intellectual culture of a minister and the studies 
he should follow are mapped out for him in the theologi- 
cal seminary, as the result of the combined wisdom of 
many minds, but there is also a self- education that must 
go on, as a constant mental nourishment, needful for the 
daily and yearly demands of his professional life. The 
wide-casting preacher, as well as pastor, must keep up 
his reading, to be a safe as well as stimulating guide in 
the broadening opportunities and growing knowledge of 
an advancing Christian age, where many new forces of 
intelligence other than the pulpit are at work. But, in 
the world of knowledge, a man's intellectual attainments 
should be proportioned to his wants. He cannot com- 
pass everything. He may spoil the whole by intellectual 
pursuits which are totally unproductive, and which lead 
him away from the main object. But it is difficult to 
draw the line. If, as Quintilian said, ages ago, the 
" orator should know all things," the preacher, who in- 
terprets the mind of God, should be surely a no less 
knowing man. As there is something sadly limiting and 



246 Horcz Homileticcz. 

degrading in ignorance, and as voluntary ignorance 
allies itself to evil, the ignorance of the " minister of 
light " is peculiarly dishonouring. 

I am not one of the advanced who would do away 
with the study of theology. A knowledge of the philos- 
ophy and history of doctrine would seem to be funda- 
mental. Christian doctrine is, also, in one sense, the 
staple of preaching, since preaching rests back upon 
it for its support, or for its real body and authoritative 
plant, without which it is unsubstantial and ineffective. 
If the man who sits in the pew need not be a theologian, 
the teacher who expounds to him divine truth should be 
familiar with its principles, as the teacher of any physical 
science should be grounded in the laws of that science. 
He should have painfully gone through them in their 
more hidden and inner relations of thought. It is not 
only the great facts, but the fundamental ideas, the phi- 
losophy of knowledge, that the preacher should be con- 
versant with, if he is expected to have that depth and 
reach of appeal irresistible to the reason and moral na- 
ture. Every sermon, even the most practical, strikes 
its root in this philosophy of doctrine. The science of 
religion — not only the doctrine of God, but the doc- 
trine of man in his relations to God — forms a minister's 
life-study. He is bound, as far as his opportunities 
allow, to pursue this study, and to read the best theo- 
logical books, past and present. His sermons should 
show the influence of this reading in their general philo- 
sophic deepening of thought, rather than in their dia- 
lectic forms that the common mind tires of. He is 
assuredly a shallow teacher who does not enlarge his 



Intellectual Preparation. 247 

field of the knowledge of those inner truths of con- 
sciousness that have regard to the manifestation of 
God in His Word, in the human soul, and in the moral 
and natural universe. He is not to think that this is 
a closed book, and its last word has been said. The- 
ology is a progressive science. While he is a delinquent 
to his professional duty not to have informed himself to 
some real extent of what has been thought and taught 
in the past in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, 
the literature of the early Greek Church that came so 
near the spirit of the Gospel, the period of Augustine, 
the old mystic theology of Germany, the theology of the 
Church of Rome in the Middle Ages, and that of the 
Reformation which contended with it, the later develop- 
ments and antagonisms of Christian doctrine in Europe, 
and with the writings of leading German and English 
theologians, he should, at the same time, not neglect 
the phases of the most modern thought, influenced, as 
it is, by the enlargement of scientific and philosophic 
knowledge ; and, as there has been continual advance- 
ment in the past, so he should look for it in the future. 
The difficulty with some is that they have locked them- 
selves up into a school. They have given over their 
minds' independence to the keeping of a human master. 
They do not study the word as a divine source of light, 
and thus exhaustless. This is all right if their conscience 
is satisfied, and if they take no further interest in the 
progress, even conflict, of thought. But their sermons 
will show this. The living thought of the day will not 
be in them. They may suppose that they hold fast what 
is good ; but they do not prove all things, and have 



248 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

settled down into the opinion that what is new is bad. 
The uses of the study of theology to the preacher are 
great, both in deepening his own thought and giving 
steadiness and force to his appeal to the mind of his 
hearers ; but in the future, it is to be hoped, that the 
theology, in the sermon itself, will be of a less scholastic 
and dead sort, will translate thought into life, will tend 
directly to the establishing of God's law in men's souls, 
to the building of righteous character. Doctrinal preach- 
ing, it is often said, is going out of fashion. That kind 
of doctrinal preaching which is drawn from a theological 
system rather than from the Word of God, which is 
wholly dialectic and abstract, ought to go out of fashion. 
Just so soon as truth is crystallized into a theory, into a 
system, it loses its life. It may be good as a guide, or 
a fence ; but it is no longer a living thing that affords 
nourishment to the soul. But the pure " teaching," or 
" doctrine," of Christ, however deeply dwelt upon by the 
reason, and made the subject of thought, is a very differ- 
ent thing. 

If the preacher is also called upon to understand man, 
in order to apply the truth to his mind, he must know 
and must continue to inform himself about the human 
mind. We do not reach the mind accidentally or in a 
confused way. The laws of will, conscience, and feel- 
ing — those principles or faculties which belong to the 
constitution of mind, which are the innate and governing 
forces of rational being — should be studied in a com- 
prehensive way, and with the aid of all lights of mod- 
ern scientific thought. Cannot a simple preacher of 
the gospel do without them? Certainly; but it does 



Intellectual Preparation, 249 

him no harm to know the laws of human activity, in 
bringing to bear upon the soul higher motives than 
those that move men in trade and the ordinary affairs 
of life. It is the same mind still, though approached 
for a different purpose. The preacher gains a de- 
cided vantage-ground from this knowledge of what 
mind is organically, and what are its moving powers. 
Who, for instance, that attempts to teach morality, can 
afford to know nothing at all of the ethical works of 
such writers as Rothe, Dorner, Martineau, and Maurice? 
They discuss the same problems, though under other 
forms, that Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and every 
earnest preacher of Christ deals with constantly. One 
may not accept all the conclusions of these writers, he 
may not yield his mind entirely up to them, any more 
than to other human authorities ; but may he not derive 
stimulus and suggestion from communion with them? 
The reading of many books (to come closer to my cor- 
respondent's question) does not "dwarf" the mind when 
it is done for a true purpose and in the right way. The 
resultant of right reading is thinking, is to excite inde- 
pendent thought ; and this is the test of reading, that 
it awakens the mental energies to reason, compare, judge, 
investigate. It is not to furnish the mind with the ideas 
of others, but to arouse its powers of individual reflec- 
tion, and to give it, at the same time, a wider field of 
material for thought. I am of the opinion that a general 
course of reading of the best authors upon such subjects 
as theology and ethics, is far better than reading at the 
time upon the special theme of a sermon. The preacher 
should do the special work himself. We may be, truly, 



250 Horcz Homileticcz. 

in danger of plagiarism, if we read other writers, other 
articles, other sermons, perhaps of very able men, upon 
the specific subject of the sermon. This getting up of a 
sermon by special reading is not the best way. It is the 
wrong sort of inspiration. If we do read the works of 
others, full time at least should elapse for the mind to 
recover its power of independent thinking, to cast off the 
spell of a mightier mind. It is better to go further and 
deeper than the immediate need, to fill the mind with 
principles, to master the philosophy of a subject, than to 
suffer our thinking upon the relations of truth to a par- 
ticular theme to be done by others. Let us prepare our 
minds by general study for preaching ; but let us make 
our own sermons. 

The subject, for example, of ethics, is a grandly 
opening field occupying now the best thinkers, for the 
minister's study and reading; I am not sure that the 
study of theology itself is not to take a more ethical 
turn, — that is, to become imbued with more of the 
human, or the human-divine, element, — and to grow 
less purely metaphysical, than in the past. It belongs 
more to Christianity than even to philosophy. If ethics 
be the science of moral law, it is still the law of life. 
Christian ethics concern the living affections, motives, 
and functions of mind that go deepest in moulding char- 
acter \ and it is permeated with the idea of love, which 
is the motive-power of the gospel and the essence of 
Christ's sacrifice for humanity. And, at the present 
time, the very noteworthy expansion of this noble sci- 
ence so that it takes in the moral relations of men not 
only, severally, to God, but also, generally, to one an- 



Intellectual Preparation. 251 

other in the social and political sphere, the laws of good 
conduct and citizenship, the better regulating of society 
by the application of the same principles of justice and 
love that govern the individual man, looking forward to 
the establishment of a righteous state on earth and the 
coming of the kingdom of God among men. — this gives 
a new import to ethical studies. The minister is most 
deeply interested in these questions, — in the prin- 
ciples of right to be observed among men, the defence 
of the oppressed and weak, the reformation of the crim- 
inal class, the elevation of the masses sunk in ignorance 
and vice, the wise treatment of the temperance question 
so as to check the evil more effectually, prison discipline, 
peace reform, the laws of trade and relations of capital 
and labour, the great subject of popular education, the 
cleansing of civil corruption in towns, cities, and the 
nation, the wide held of benevolence and almsgiving, — 
all the hard problems of political economy and sociology, 
which can never be solved without the aid of the Chris- 
tian principle ; taking in also the relations of the indus- 
trial and the fine arts, of science, or whatever really 
influences men for good or evil in their social and public 
relations. 

This subject of reading, especially what and how to 
read in order to prepare the preacher to preach, so that 
he may be " a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, 
rightly dividing the word of truth," is, in its place, of 
exceeding interest, and deserves a fuller treatment than 
my time and space permit me to give it. 

I have already spoken of the general reading in theol- 
ogy, philosophy, and ethics which is useful to a minister 



252 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

for the maintaining of the intellectual life and the solid- 
ifying of his preaching, or, in Sydney Smith's terse 
language, u what is needful to have and shameful to 
want." It is quite easy to give advice that one does 
not himself find so easy to follow, and to recommend 
books that one does not himself read ; and it is likewise 
absurd to expect that an ordinary hard-working pastor 
can carry out so extended a system of reading as a 
purely scientific or literary man is forced to do ; for the 
minister is not primarily a learned man, since the very 
chief apostles were called unlearned and ignorant men 
(&vSp€s aypd/jijjiaTOL kcu iSiorrcu) \ although it was added 
" and they took knowledge of them, that they had been 
with Jesus." They drew, indeed, from a fountain 
deeper than books, because Christ opened to their 
minds things divine, and revealed that knowledge of 
God which is more intimate and spiritual than lies on 
the surface, like intellectual or natural knowledge. But, 
for all this, it is nevertheless true, that unstudious min- 
isters, as a general rule, survive their usefulness in the 
pulpit ; and there is at least one field of study which 
may be said to be absolutely essential to the preacher, 
to the maker of real sermons, though even here there 
is room for exceptions, since divine truth is something 
to be interpreted by the prophet rather than translated 
by the scholar, namely, the study of the Scriptures in 
their original languages. One might say, that a minister 
should never dare to preach on a text that he has not 
carefully examined in the original ; yet there is a quaint 
story told of John Bunyan, which is not without instruc- 
tion to the arrogance of the mere scholar. One of this 



Intellectual Preparation. 2 



DJ 



ss, from Cambridge University, encountered the un- 
licensed tinker and asked him how he, not having the 

anal Scriptures, had the hardihood to preach. To 
this, Bunyan answered by asking the scholar if he him- 
self had the originals, those written by the prophets and 
ape-: t :. Xj. but he had what he knew to be : 
copies of the niginals. "And I" said Bunyan, u be- 
lieve the English Bible to be a true copy also;" upon 
which the university man went his way. And was not 
Bunyan, in the main, right in saying that the plain 
English Bible, before the new translations, revisions, and 
commentaries, good as they are, had been made, con- 
tained the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in all its spir- 
itual fulness and saving power? Bat for the preacher 
to plant his feet on the original record, as on a rock, is 
to stand more firm. He should teach his people this 
truth, so that they shall not be offended when the mean- 
ing of a " asss ge is discussed. The reality and usefulness 
of commentaries may be overstated, but the value ot 

gesis for purposes of instruction cannot be. Original 
and conscientious sis is becoming more and more 

the only foundation of preaching and theology, — the 
preparing of those living stones which the reason builds 
into the harmonious structure of divine science. I 
for this cause that the preacher should be, for himself, 
a Hebrew and Greek scholar, so that he shall be able to 
forward all his life the exegetical study of the whole 
Scriptures. His commentaries, translations, revisions. 
dictionaries, grammars, chrestomathies are nothing more 
than helps to this broad study of the Word, by which 
the Scripture- e co-ordinated and compared with 



254 Horcz Homileticcz. 

themselves, and the true " mind of the Spirit " evolved. 
Commentaries may be a slavery and a snare if a man 
be not himself an accurate scholar, able to judge, or, at 
least, to form an independent opinion, one not only 
drawn from the grammatical analysis of a passage, but 
from the survey of a book and of the complete Script- 
ures, in the spirit of the language employed and in the 
usage of words, terms, and ideas. This daily systematic 
study of the Scriptures in the original, carried through 
long periods, and the professional life, with all aids of 
learning possible, fits one to preach, better than the study 
of isolated passages for the sole purpose of making 
sermons. Topics for preaching will spring up fresh and 
abundant, — they will be like the suggestions of the 
Divine Spirit. This will make the full and spiritual 
preacher, who goes to draw from the everlasting foun- 
tain. The minister should have enthusiasm enough to 
pursue this systematic study by himself, setting apart 
certain hours for it, but he also may be urged on by 
association with his brethren in study together of entire 
books of the Old and New Testaments ; and surely 
young ministers may thus, by mutual stimulation, acquire 
more Hebrew and Greek than they have done in the 
seminary or college, especially if one or more of their 
number is an able and earnest scholar. I think it to be 
the duty of a young pastor, at his settlement, to form, 
with others, such an association for a thorough study of 
the Scriptures, giving much time, and, I might say, 
prayerful thought to it, and letting nothing interfere 
with it. His own library will gradually show the influ- 
ence of this strenuous and continuous study. His com- 



Intellectual Preparation. 255 

mentaries, selected with intelligent care, will by and by 
extend themselves over the whole Bible, and instead of 
the dusty and old-fashioned Rosenmuller, or Bengel, he 
will have the best representatives both of the old and 
new learning ; and, for one, I do not think that some 
of the older commentaries are to be neglected ; for 
example, Bengel, Calvin's Commentaries, Luther on 
Psalms and Galatians, Leighton, Lightfoot, and before 
all, Chrysostom, who still remains a mine of theological 
learning and devout thought. But the minister now has 
an untold advantage in his access to such scholars as 
Ewald, De Wette, Meyer, Godet, and the best modern 
English commentators ; and he has no excuse in re- 
maining ignorant of the freshest Biblical researches that 
are brought to his door in English translations. If he 
can go to the German and French sources, so much the 
better ; but he should go to these for critical, not hom- 
iletical, purposes. The homiletical portion of Lange's 
Commentary, no one, probably, conceives to be of much 
value. The preacher wants only light, not methods, in 
his professional work. He asks no one to do his think- 
ing. Pulpit helps are pulpit hindrances. They enfeeble 
the preacher's invention. In preparing a sermon, let 
him first make his plan and write his sermon ; and after 
that, if he please, he may read the sermon, the article, 
the review of another upon the same topic, and may 
then, perhaps, be able to correct an erroneous statement 
or strengthen a weak one ; but his dictionary, grammar, 
and commentary, — his Winer and Buttman, — these 
are the best tools to help him quarry the original stone. 
The polish and decoration come when the material is 



256 Horcz Homileticcz. 

prepared and is already reared upon the constructive 
lines of architecture which he knows to be firm and 
true, because laid in faithful and solid scholarship. Thus 
strong and spiritual preachers are made. I would only 
add, that the revival of interest in Hebrew study among 
settled pastors, is one of the best signs of the times. 

Of course a book might be written upon the intel- 
lectual life and culture of the minister in its varied di- 
rections, linguistic, scientific, and philosophic. The 
more a mind is enriched the richer will be its product. 
The better it is trained the sharper its penetration. A 
philosophic mind reaches the heart of a subject far 
more readily than a half-educated one, however bright 
in wit and rhetorical endowment. The success of 
F. W. Robertson as a preacher was due in a great 
measure to the philosophic discipline of his powers. 
Yet rhetorical culture must be added, as representing 
the external side of the mind, its expressive power. 
Rhetoric is not altogether an art or superficial study, — 
it allies itself with psychology and logic, and also with 
literature. Literature is a universal language, in which 
the mind expresses its thought, emotion, and inventive 
fancy in the most living form. It is the moral and 
intellectual life of humanity embodied in speech, and 
in its grand departments of historic and creative litera- 
ture, the preacher may find the human soul, which he is 
appointed to guide and save, imaged forth more clearly 
than in any other way, from the book of Job to Shak- 
speare's dramas, and from Shakspeare to the last work 
of literary genius which sets forth in vital colour and 
expression the original ideas of the mind. 



Intellectual Preparation. 257 

Literature, says Matthew Arnold, is the best that has 
been thought and said in the world, and in order to 
know ourselves and the world we must know the best 
that has been written and spoken. Literature, indeed, 
comprehends all knowledge worth knowing and record- 
ing, forming the image and expression of the human 
soul, not only in conduct but in beauty, not only regulat- 
ing the moral sense, but feeding the emotions and 
desires. We often see scholarly ministers, but we do 
not always see ministers of literary cultivation. There 
is a difference here. There is vigour but not culture 
of mind, strength but not gentleness. Why not the two 
combined, as in the blessed One, of whom a quaint 
English poet, Thomas Dekker, wrote : — 

" The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer; 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed."' 

In this connection it might be said that when Art 
shall assume its true place in education, — a place which 
it has not yet obtained in America, excepting in the 
department of the art of money-making, — then aesthetic 
culture, in its important relations to the interpretation 
and expression of Christian truth, in the world of the 
ideal in religion, will be recognized by preachers of 
" whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. " There 
is real poetry in the Bible and in the religion of Christ ; 
for it is " the eternal law, that first in beauty should be 

17 



2s8 Horcz Homileticcz. 



first in might. " Among books which should be found 
in a minister's library and diligently read, there might 
be less useful, enriching, and mentally-taxing books than 
Ruskin's "Modern Painters," Kugler's "Handbooks of 
Painting," and Fergusson's " History of Architecture." 
But the wide-open book of Nature is also spread out for 
the minister's study, in which the mind touches its 
native soil and is reinvigorated. The soul of Nature is 
divine. The beautiful and the good go together, and 
the moral impulse is profoundly allied with the natural 
when unperverted by sin. God should be regarded as 
immanent in Nature, which is the manifestation of Him- 
self and His thought. When we once realize this truth 
then the world becomes a new thing to us. Then the 
study of Nature will be quickening to all the best that 
is in us. The contemplation of Nature in its aesthetic 
aspects, however, does not give us, as it seems to me, 
positive thoughts or ideas, so much as it refreshes and 
inspires the mind, renders it productive, and impels it 
to new achievement. It makes it over, as a dip into 
the ocean in summer heats makes over the body, and 
cures its lassitude and infirmities. It is like the lifting 
influence of good music. Frederick the Great was wont 
to listen to music when he was planning his most heroic 
campaigns. George Eliot said that she always wrote 
best after listening to the music of the great masters in 
Germany. Her mind was aroused and made creative. 

I have thus desired to show that the minister in the 
range of his studies not only should read books of knowl- 
edge, but books of inspiration. His preaching will be 
indescribably improved \ for who has not caught fire in 



Intellectual Preparation. 259 

sermon-making at times from the poetry of the prophets? 
Dante, Shakspeare, and Tennyson may also, now and 
then, awaken in us a subtler thought, penetrating to the 
heart of things. Our confessions and creeds are them- 
selves symbols. The mystery of divine truth can, in one 
sense, be only made known to us through the forms of 
language and expression. We see as through a glass 
darkly. Yet the preacher has a superiority to the ordi- 
nary speaker, in the intellectual posture of his audience 
and their moral and spiritual preparation for the recep- 
tion of divine truth. Carlyle says : " What an advantage 
has the pulpit where you address men already arranged 
to hear you, and in a vehicle which long use has ren- 
dered easy ; how infinitely harder when you have all to 
create, — not the ideas only and the sentiments, but the 
symbols and the moods of mind ! Nevertheless, in all 
cases where man addresses man, on his spiritual interests 
especially, there is a sacredness, could we but evolve it, 
and think and speak in it. Consider better what it is 
thou meanest by a symbol ; how far thou hast insight 
into the nature thereof." 

I have been led away, by the interest of the theme of 
the intellectual culture of the ministry, from the imme- 
diate questions of my correspondent, and have only left 
myself room to say, that in the actual preparation of a 
sermon, as far as my judgment goes, the books one 
should read should be limited pretty much to the Scrip- 
tures themselves, and to those scholarly aids that enable 
us to come at the exact meaning and substance of the 
text. That is the primary and essential thing. In a 
word, the sermon should be drawn by our study and 



260 Horce Hontileticcz. 

thinking from the exhaustless soil of the Word rather 
than from the comparatively thin soil of a book, or an 
article in a theological review, or another sermon. To 
be sure, a preacher has a right to draw from all sources 
where he can get help and light upon his theme, but his 
study should be systematic and general instead of spas- 
modic and topical, and it should be, in making sermons, 
rather directed to the broader principles of truth, with 
his own thoughtful application of them to the subject in 
hand, than applied merely to themes for the exigencies 
of pulpit ministration from week to week. 

What are the relations % of a preacher to public 
opinion ? 

The preacher is supposed to be a man of sagacity, 
endued with a grain or two of common-sense. He looks 
over his own little sheepfold and sees around. He hears 
the voices without as well as within. He has some com- 
prehension of the age he lives in, and knows he does not 
live in the times of Duns Scotus or Cotton Mather. He 
discerns the signs of the times as well as the redness of 
the morning sky. He studies the currents of popular 
sentiment, whence they rise and whither they trend. 
This is as essential as the study of books. Human acts, 
even of a combined and public nature, do not occur by 
chance, since they are the acts of those gifted with in- 
telligent will, so that no public opinion that has ruled 
communities has been without moral character. Public 
opinion springs from the action of mind upon mind, 
brought together in families, societies, states, and epochs, 
and all public opinion can thus be traced by a divine, 



Public Opinion. 261 

if not human, eye to its source in moral choice. The 
glow of a public opinion that lights and hangs over a 
whole land is but the reflection of the hidden fires of 
thousands of minds ; for no one mind, or ten, or hun- 
dreds of minds make public opinion, though public opin- 
ion is sometimes originated in the soul of a strong man 
inspired by good or evil. Public opinion can sometimes 
be traced home to its beginnings. For instance, the 
opinion which has spread so widely the principles of 
social libertinism in the state and the popular life, may 
be assigned with considerable accuracy to the poet^ 
philosopher who lived by the lake of Geneva, — a man 
of original genius. Should not the preacher know some- 
thing of the life and thought of so brilliant a mind as 
Rousseau, valueless as his philosophical opinions are? 
Thus, also, the religious fire of the Methodist movement, 
which passed over nearly two continents, sprang from 
the mind of a young Oxford student, humble enough to 
employ any method that promised good ; as the great- 
est revival movement of this century was originated in 
the self-devoted spirit of an unambitious Sabbath-school 
teacher, of Chicago. 

The public opinion which overthrew slavery could, with 
equal certainty, be traced in its law of evolution to one 
or two superior minds, who, by their penetration and 
moral force, started the idea of making the theory of 
equal rights practical ; an idea that will finally give 
citizenship to the Indian and to all dwellers, of honest 
pursuits, in the land. I do not speak of the more spirit- 
ual influences back of these minds. But a soul gives 
birth to an idea of human and universal interest touching 



262 Horcz Homileticcz. 

time or eternity ; the idea itself is vitalizing ; it awakes 
the wish of propagandism ; another soul is fired with it, 
and another, and another, until it bursts out in a public 
expression, and begins to tell in acts and matters of great 
practical moment. This, perhaps, as a general rule, is 
the genesis of public opinion, — that is, where it is not 
positively fabricated. Napoleon manufactured public 
opinion to suit his own ends. But in the public opinion 
which is of a more natural growth the process is generally 
through the enthusiasm of a conception, communicated 
from one soul to others, which works like leaven until 
the whole mass is leavened ; and thus public opinion, 
though a seemingly abstract phenomenon, strikes deep 
down into human responsibility, and is itself, while ever 
so widely massed and extended, a living, accountable 
act. Should not the preacher of truth and life study 
with intense interest the laws of public opinion? For 
public opinion has laws that are to be found in the phi- 
losophy of the mind, or, more simply, of human nature. 

One of its laws, we may be assured, is its ready alli- 
ance with human depravity, which alliance creates one 
of the most tenacious forms of public opinion. How 
strong has been, and continues to be, the principle of 
war, which, in the bosom of Christianity, a religion of 
peace, is powerful to arouse nations to the most brutal 
and destructive rages ! And how impotent sounds the 
counsel of Christian men, idealists as we name them, 
who advise the disarmament of the powers and the settle- 
ment of all disputes by arbitration. But another of the 
laws of public opinion, which, happily, is yet more strong 
and outlasting, is that which weaves itself along with the 



Public Opinion. 263 

nobler constitutional principle of right in the human 
mind and such opinion has the strength of the divine 
will in it, and must in the end prevail ; for, judging 
from man's history, which is the sketch of God's plan 
in the past, no public opinion basing itself upon a cor- 
rupt principle has within it the power of perpetuity, 
though it carry all, for the time, before it. Even public 
opinion which is founded upon right may sometimes die 
out, if it be of a local nature, or have reference only to a 
temporary object or order of things, like the powerful 
opinion that broke down and swept away the relics of 
tyranny in England; or the revolution of 1688, which, 
though founded upon just principles, was yet of a defined 
character that bore in it its own limitations, and was 
finished when its object was attained. It is only a purely 
moral or spiritual public opinion which does not utterly 
die, which has in it the principle of permanence, be- 
cause the objects of such an opinion always exist, and 
the absolute truth concerning them never changes, and 
is essential. An English Quaker, quoted by Robert 
Southey, says : " Faith overcomes the world : Opinion 
is overcome by the world. Faith is masterful in its 
power and effects ; it is of divine tendency to renew the 
heart, and to produce those fruits of purity and holiness 
which prove the dignity of its original : Opinion has 
filled the world, enlarged the field of speculation, and 
been the cause of producing fruits directly opposite to 
the nature of Faith. Opinion has terminated in schism : 
Faith is productive of unity." But, looked at in a larger 
sense, opinion may become faith, opinion may become 
conviction, and thus be permanent, which is the ten- 



264 Horcz Honiileticcz. 

dency and hope of the Christian religion. Is not justice, 
is not humanity, is not freedom, is not righteousness, is 
not peace, is not love to become the avowed public 
opinion, governing every public act, vote, and decision, 
as well as the private belief of men? This is what the 
preacher is to strive to effect by studying and compre- 
hending intelligently the laws of public opinion, and 
casting into it constantly the purifying influences of the 
gospel. 

Public opinion must be taken as a fact always exist- 
ing, always powerful, and the preacher who seeks to do 
men good in every way should observe carefully the 
uses and abuses of public opinion, unless he wishes to 
remain a mere ecclesiastic confined in the mechanism 
through which he works, like the man hidden in the 
chess-playing machine. Public opinion has its uses and 
may become a great progressive force in the world, and, 
if rightly guided, shall make for truth and righteousness. 
Wherever public opinion, then, is freest, as in a repub- 
lican government, it is one of the chief instruments of 
power, of good together with evil. Where every mind is 
allowed to have and express an opinion, in this manner 
men are stimulated to have an opinion, and, if that opin- 
ion be vital and forceful, it may become public opinion, 
and soon grow to be something more than opinion, and 
enter into the councils of the nation, sit upon the bench 
of legislation, and rule the whole policy of the land. 
Public opinion is, therefore, a stupendous lever in a free 
government, and was never more so than in our country. 
We are ruled by it. Never was there an enlightened 
nation so morally independent as a mass, and so intel- 



Public Opinion. 265 

lectually dependent as individuals. I think we are far 
more so than the English people. This works for good, 
and sometimes for evil. There is a good example in 
the Temperance reform. The growth of public opinion 
on this question in our country has been gradual but 
steady, and the more slow because the antagonistic opin- 
ion had linked itself upon the strong bent of human 
nature to sensual indulgence. The two opinions have 
wrestled together in deadly embrace ; but the progress 
of temperance reform, gaining triumph after triumph, is 
incontestable and wonderful. It is, indeed, public opin- 
ion alone that can legitimate such a measure as the pro- 
hibitory law. Forty years ago it would not have been 
popular or legitimate ; but the voice of society, guarding 
its own welfare, now rationally and clearly demands it, 
whatever may be our individual opinions in regard to 
wise or unwise methods of temperance reform. Can a 
minister of the gospel remain apathetic to these outside 
movements and discussions of men, when law advances 
upon the steps of public opinion, and can we doubt, in 
spite of all exceptions, that human law does advance, in 
equity, justice, and a broader humanity? The uses of 
public opinion are a matter not to be despised if it 
makes the laws in a free government ; and so, too, the 
uses and advances of public opinion in reference to all 
great plans of benevolence. Public opinion is com- 
manding government to found benevolent institutions 
and schools. It demands, and means to enforce its 
demand, that government shall take care of its wards, — 
the Indian and the coloured races, — and having brought 
them low, shall raise them up to a higher level than 



266 Horce Homileticcz. 

before. It means to see this thing done. Here is the 
hiding of the popular power, constituting a mysterious 
but ever-present element, like the air which is " only 
heard when it speaks in thunder.' , 

Christ, who taught that " none of us liveth to himself, 
and no man dieth to himself," clearly signifies that his 
preachers cannot stand aloof from public opinion, or 
anything which so deeply concerns the highest welfare of 
the race. It is too powerful an instrumentality of benev- 
olent action for a Christian minister to take no heed of 
it or remain separate from it, though he need not study 
it like the Jesuit, but like the apostle who studied the 
bent of thought at Jerusalem and iVthens. He should 
work with and through others and along the lines of 
human thought and interest. Men are set in families, 
communities, states, and nations, in order that truth may 
run more freely upon the all-pervading lines of human 
sympathy and common thinking. 

But the preacher is, nevertheless, in one sense, to be 
independent of public opinion. He is never to allow 
his personal will, or conscience, to be submerged and 
rolled helplessly along by the current of public opinion ; 
for in this way he loses his power to regulate and direct 
it. Upon no consideration to differ with a predominat- 
ing public opinion, whether political, or moral, or re- 
ligious, is slavery instead of Christianity. This is leaving 
Cod for man, and forgetting the first elements of faith. 
This is acknowledging that the prevalent opinion is 
always right, which is very far from fact, and in this 
way we could have had no Protestantism and no Chris- 
tianity. A minister should, therefore, adopt a public 



Public Opinion. 267 

opinion as he does other things, upon moral and religious 
grounds. This will prevent the assumption of an opinion 
merely because others adopt it, and will lead to the sift- 
ing of motives, to see if, in his own case, the fear of 
man, or the thirst for notoriety, or the blind interests of 
party or denomination, or the love of novelty, or the 
love of antiquity, or personal prejudices and antipathies, 
or personal affections, or obstinate consistencies, or any- 
thing but the pure love of truth and the motive that 
looks simply to God for His approbation, — is, indeed, 
the impelling motive of our adhesion to it. And, once 
more, the Christian preacher, since he is a guide and 
shepherd of the people, should himself make public 
opinion, when it is wanting. A sanctified will built up 
the broken walls of Jerusalem in the face of her enemies. 
The truly important question of the day, of the moment, 
is the perpetual opportunity for the application of this 
principle. We need not ransack the uttermost times and 
seas for such questions. They are pressing on us. Ideas 
and opinions were never so powerful as to-day, and it 
was never more necessary to create the right opinion. 
While calm, we must act. Sincere differences, it is true, 
exist among the best Christians ; but he who is going to 
do any good and to move the world forward must have 
the courage of his convictions, must take a quick and 
firm stand on what he believes to be right ; and perhaps 
it is not useless to obtain at times a glimpse of the 
mightiness of the instrumentality of public opinion, to 
see its truly tremendous workings, to look at its cease- 
less shaft moving swiftly, silently, to and fro, whirling 
the million wheels, brains, thoughts, activities, emotions, 



268 Hovce Homileticce. 

passions, policies of the nation and the world — for pub- 
lic opinion is the central engine of the moral world. A 
glance, then, at the power of this agency may make it a 
more religiously grand — yes, in some aspects, solemn — 
subject to the Christian preacher. No wonder the priests 
and rulers " feared the people." The voice of the peo- 
ple is sometimes the voice of God, because, through this 
popular voice, God has wrought His own will in spite of 
the opinions of the wisest. This voice changes religious 
as well as political systems, now for good, now for evil ; 
but in the end for good, if Christian preachers and people 
strive ceaselessly, with wisdom and love, to shape public 
opinion for good ends. They cannot ignore it. 

Thomas a Kempis wrote earnestly for a monastic life, 
he pleaded eloquently for solitude and silence, and he 
affirmed that he always deplored the time he spent in 
the society of men, from the lowering of his spiritual 
life that it occasioned ; but he went against his own 
views by writing a book that has blessedly influenced the 
religious opinions and lives of myriads. We cannot se- 
cede from our race. We are not to pray to be taken 
out of the world but to be kept from the evil. Contem- 
plation must be mingled with action. Even sometimes, to 
the utter discontent of his own spirit, the preacher must 
ply his vocation in troubled and stormy waters. Better, 
indeed, the whirlwind than the stagnation of public opin- 
ion. Through the tempest, wisdom, courage and faith 
may steer, but in the dead calm all things corrupt, and 

" The very deep did rot ; " 
the principles of right, truth, and nobleness drop out of 
the soul, and it becomes the easy conquest of every kind 



Public Opinion. 269 

of base tyranny. And this leads me to speak a word I 
have long had in my heart, of the great want with us as 
a nation. 

Every nation that possesses power and perpetuity has 
some profound idea or sentiment, or public opinion, it 
might be called, more or less true perhaps though it 
must have some truth in it, that moulds and holds it to- 
gether. It enters into the life of the people and makes 
them all to drink into the same character and spirit. 

This was true even of the ancient nations. Greece 
was sustained for centuries by the power of the intel- 
lectual idea. It was a struggle of cultivated mind with 
barbarism. The Greek was always to assert, under all 
circumstances, the superiority of the Greek mind over 
mere brute forces. The unity and permanence of the 
Roman empire lay in the idea of the right and supremacy 
of Roman law. The Roman recognized his own law as 
the gift of the gods, as unchangeably just, as one at 
Rome and Athens, as the law which should govern all 
nations. He was the chosen legislator of the world. He 
had a right to govern and to subdue the earth to Roman 
law \ and this public opinion shaped him into the resist- 
less legionary. 

Modern, half-barbarian Russia up to this time has had 
a simple spiritual principle that refines her people and 
fuses the vast mass together. It is the paternal idea of 
its government. That government stands in the earthly 
place of God — the Father. All Russians are children 
of the Czar. His authority is looked upon as divine. 
The rudest boor is made in some degree unselfish and 
heroic by the operation of this higher sentiment, con- 



270 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

nected as it is with the religious idea of a Russian theoc- 
racy. It is indeed a poor kind of government for man, 
because it is affected by human imperfection, but it has 
had its day with a rude people. In France, notwith- 
standing her revolutions and changes, there has ever ex- 
isted a fine but powerful principle, half divine and half 
profane, half an idea and half a sentiment, which has 
kept the nation alive and made it strong and united. 
Napoleon seized upon it and called it " la gloire" It 
is a sentiment which now and then springs up into a 
flame and consumes selfishness and what is grossly mate- 
rial, It kindles an ideal of the honour of France, and 
her right to the first place in all that is great, brilliant, 
and progressive. All are one here, however split into 
Bonapartist, or Legitimist, or Republican factions. In 
Germany, now in reality, as it has been for centuries 
in aspiration and yearning, the idea of German unity 
has pressed the nation on to higher and higher com- 
mon attainments in statesmanship, philosophy, and let- 
ters. In England, the great fusing or uniting principle 
is loyalty, — loyalty to the constitution and sovereign of 
England. However weakened, this has thus far held fast 
in all strains. It is true that higher sentiments flow 
into this one and purify and strengthen it. More truly 
divine ideas of freedom and Christian faith enter into 
and sanctify this principle ; but the constitution and sov- 
ereignty of England, deep in an Englishman's heart, are 
received as the historic embodiment of English liberty 
and religion. This idea of loyalty makes the Englishman, 
with all his coarser traits, chivalric and spirited. It 
forms a bond of brotherhood through that vast empire. 



Public Opinion. 271 

In times of trial, it brings forth a noble and exalted 
self-sacrifice. It gives play to the poetic and heroic 
emotions. 

Now. it has sometimes seemed to me that our chief 
want as a nation was a lack of some one idea or senti- 
ment, some cohesive principle which would bind us 
together and bring forth truly great, national, and 
unselfish elements in our character. The fire of some 
higher love, to fuse us in one, and to burn up every 
miserable and separating obstacle, is what we want. We 
need something to arouse the brother-heart, to refine 
the gross earthliness, to lift us above the material view 
of things. We are vainly seeking national unity and 
greatness in the pathway of self-interest. It is the striv- 
ing of material motives ; and in this low way we shall 
never find the path to national greatness, but for this 
there must be union in the spirit of the people, in their 
devotion to some one lofty and divine idea. 

But have we no national idea to keep us alive and 
bind us together — East and West, North and South? 
Surely we have, if we will not heap mountains of earth 
upon it and extinguish it, and if our preachers and men 
of faith will be true to themselves and the truth they 
advocate. It is the idea of humanity, — of carrying up 
our own and the common humanity to its highest level 
of perfect manhood, — of a manhood which can only be 
found and perfected in Christ. We are to realize this 
truth that men are united and made complete not only 
because they are created one in nature, but because 
they are one in Christ, the common and divine Head of 
humanity. 



272 Horce Honiileticcz. 

There is a character drawn in very vivid lines by one 
of our own historians, — the character of William, the 
father of the Dutch Republic. Was ever a nation more 
prostrated and submerged under the deep waters of 
every imaginable woe than was his nation? But how 
cheerful was his trust in the idea of a Divine guidance 
and headship of the nation, even after that great blow 
— the fall of Haarlem ! " But as, notwithstanding our 
efforts," he wrote, "it has pleased God Almighty to dis- 
pose of Haarlem according to His divine will, shall we, 
therefore, deny and deride His holy Word? Has the 
strong arm of the Lord thereby grown weaker? Has 
His Church, therefore, come to nought? You ask if I 
have entered into a firm treaty with any great king or 
potentate ; to which I answer, that before I ever took 
up the cause of the oppressed Christians in these prov- 
inces, I had entered into a close alliance with the King of 
kings, and I am firmly convinced that all who put their 
trust in Him shall be saved by His Almighty hand." 
Let Christian preachers breathe the same higher trust 
into the public opinion of this country, and awaken the 
idea of a spiritual unity for the developnent of a perfect 
humanity here, in this free land, making first America 
and then the world truly Christian. 

What is the golden mean between the dead sermon 
and the sensational sermon ? 

The question, as it stands, is a contradiction in terms, 
for, if " sensational " be the converse to "dead," it 
means the same as " alive," and surely nothing could 
be a golden mean between what is dead and what is 



A Sensational Sermon. 273 



alive ; yet the intent of the question is plain, and it has 
reference to the distinction, which is a real one, be- 
tween true and false sensationalism in preaching. 

The age we live in is a sensational age. It is not, at 
all events, a dead age. Such activity, such wonderful 
things occurring, such brilliant scientific discoveries, such 
peering into mysteries, such discontent of life, such un- 
satisfied ambition, such planning and doing as if nothing 
had been done, such novel, startling, and audacious forms 
both of good and evil, constitute a state of things that 
has never before been seen to such an extent, and it is 
impossible to say to what it will come. There is elec- 
tricity in the air. Everything is surcharged with it. The 
newspaper, bringing the ends of the earth together like 
the points of a galvanic battery, gives us a shock, and 
we almost see the flash produced by a skilful manipula- 
tion of the popular sensational nerve. The literature, 
especially the fictitious literature, in the hands of young 
people, instead of being the healthy study of nature as 
in Scott's novels, and in such a story as Blackmore's 
" Lorna Doone," or the more subjective development 
of character and thought as in " Henry Esmond," 
" Hypatia," and the works of George Eliot, or even of 
the pure affections, is so exclusively sensational, that it 
seems as if there could be nothing hereafter new to the 
young, nothing of " wonder, hope, and love," and assured- 
ly nothing of horror, shame, and detestable vice. In such 
a time, for preaching alone to be dead through its dul- 
ness is, to say the least, unfortunate. It is too much 
like the famous iceberg in the green meadow. 

Let the sermon fail in other things, but let it be, at all 

18 



274 Horcz Homileticcz. 

events, alive in interest and attraction. " Eloquence," 
Emerson says, " must be attractive. The virtue of books 
is to be readable, and of orators to be interesting." There 
should be substantial and original thought in every ser- 
mon, bui; no matter how much thought you have in your 
sermon, if people will not listen to it, what is the use? 
There is a sensationalism then which is genuine and true, 
which means life, and which is the communication of 
living truth and thought. To take the lowest view, al- 
though I do not quite agree with this kind of meta- 
physics, it is through the senses, or what is called the 
sense-perception, that we obtain the primitive material 
of knowledge, and take the first step toward the acquisi- 
tion and formation of ideas. The senses, through their 
capacity of feeling and imagination, gather together what 
the reason works upon, and from which it brings forth its 
more perfect ideas. The sense of things felt strongly is 
the preacher's arsenal of effective weapons. The allegory 
of " the ewe lamb " was a piece of exquisite sensational- 
ism that Nathan, the prophet-preacher, employed to wing 
the truth to the king's conscience. The appeal of White- 
field to the angel flying heavenward, and his bold use of 
the passing thunder-storm to intensify the solemnity of 
religious exhortation, were in the highest degree sensa- 
tional, but not on that account less genuine and forcible. 
Pulpit style should not lack this vital quality, which makes 
it popular. Feeling that gives birth to lively illustration, 
to pictures, to vividness of fancy, to simple pathos, to the 
sympathetic and unreserved expression of belief, to honest 
love of good and to honest hate of evil, never fails to 
awaken correspondent feeling. No danger of deadness 



A Sensational Sermon. 275 

here. No fear of dulness where the heart is really 
moved with a sincere passion to so set forth the truth as 
to move other men and save them. Often the church's 
hearth is cleanly swept, the fuel is laid in the most scien- 
tific fashion, and the patient congregation wait to be 
warmed and fed, but what is wanting ? — fire. True 
feeling in the preacher is wanting. Divine truth needs 
to be taken out of cold abstractions and cast into con- 
crete forms ; it must become alive through the feeling 
of the preacher. There are not many in an American 
congregation who do not believe in a God, or in Jesus 
Christ, who was sent to reveal the Father's love to men ; 
but yet they do not feel these great truths enough to 
make them real for their eternal life. The preacher who 
does feel them makes others feel them. His argument 
is not that kind of reasoning which entraps the intellect 
for a while, but it also wins the heart, the conscience, 
and the will. 

There is, it may thus be seen, a true sensationalism in 
preaching without which the sermon would be dead. 
How is this to be distinguished from false sensationalism ? 

The distinction between true and false sensationalism 
in preaching appears to me chiefly to consist in two 
things, namely, true knowledge and moral earnestness. 
The false preacher has no real and thorough knowledge 
of his subject. Neither by experience nor by study has 
he come to the clear possession of truth. The truth is 
not his, is not inwrought in him, so that he knows that 
of which he speaks. He is, in so far, a charlatan, who 
makes a show of knowledge of which he is not master. 
In like manner one may call himself a scientist and deal 



276 Horcz Homileticcz. 

out his opinions and prophecies — very sensational ones 
— whose knowledge is entirely superficial. A man who 
has read a few books on art and seen a few pictures may 
esteem himself an art critic, fitted to judge of the great 
works ; whereas a knowledge of art comes through the 
experience and observation of a lifetime, and is perhaps 
the inheritance of two or three generations of culture. 
Taste is a plant of slow growth. So, indeed, in some 
sense, is the capacity to teach religious truth; which 
capacity is the fruit of religious culture, meditation, work 
and personal experience. The sensational preacher, in 
this sense, passes for more than he is worth. He makes 
a self-display through the assumed knowledge of truth 
that he has never really grasped, that he has never made 
his actual possession. Of course he must make up for 
this deficiency. One man does it by dogmatism. He 
calls hard names and pronounces bigoted opinions. He 
asserts where he cannot reason. Another hides his 
superflcialness under a veil of smart and grotesque lan- 
guage. The whole American continental field of religious 
slang is ransacked. The profanity is but thinly masqued 
by calling it a sermon. The " Sam Jones " (he may be 
a much better man than I who say it) style of preacher 
does more harm than good, because he abuses not only 
the " modesty of nature," but the Christian liberty, which 
is not lawlessness in speech any more than in conduct. I 
would give a large liberty ; I would not exclude native 
humour from the pulpit, nor story-telling, nor pithy illus- 
tration, nor home-thrusts at hard cases, nor homely wit, 
but I would exclude that kind of vulgar exaggeration and 
low buffoonery which the monks of the sixteenth century 



A Sensational Sermon. 277 

indulged in, and a class of preachers of the nineteenth 
century practise, as commending the gospel to the com- 
mon people, whereas they only increase the prevailing 
tendency among the illiterate as well as the educated, to 
make a jest of truth, and take all the nobleness and 
heart out of divine things. The fault of irreverence is a 
crying fault of the country and of the times. Besides, 
such coarse and hot spicery makes it very difficult for 
the simpler diet of the gospel to be relished at all. The 
language of the English Bible was just the golden mean 
between the popular and the learned speech. It was 
plain Saxon- English, which did not stoop to the vulgar 
and low, nor deal in the high and bookish. 

The second more profound difference between true 
and false sensationalism consists in moral earnestness. 
A man who is thoroughly in earnest may say almost any- 
thing, because by saying it he does not mean to produce 
a sensation, but to arouse men to goodness. The whole 
subject of preaching to the emotions, or the emotional 
element in preaching, is an important subject by itself, 
which I will not now take up. Neither will the truly 
earnest man say anything that is absolutely lowering to 
the truth. What the preacher says should not end in a 
laugh, but should be a word lodged in the heart of the 
sinner, spoken with the sincere motive to save him from 
his sins. Love can say what logic and the intellect can- 
not, because love makes the object and subject one, and 
prepares the way by a hidden and genial force for the 
reception of the truth. Here the personality of the 
preacher is of the utmost importance ; and his spiritual 
condition and conviction of the truth, if it has wrought 



278 Hovcb Homileticce. 

in him its own spirit, even the spirit of him who is the 
truth, will tell upon all he utters, and make him, thus 
speaking the truth in love, an eloquent witness and advo- 
cate for Christ. What is eloquence ? It is certainly not 
sensationalism in the common meaning of the term. 
Eloquence is something more profound. It does not 
move and agitate the mere surface of the mind. It goes 
beneath the sense or the sensational, and enters the depths 
of personal and spiritual being. It is the power of soul 
upon soul, the reciprocity of influence, so that the thoughts 
and feelings of the speaker are communicated as by a 
magnetic power to the hearer, and the two are made 
morally and spiritually one, by the fusing influence of the 
truth uttered in the fire of a strong purpose. Then the 
minds of men are moulded like clay in the hands of the 
potter. The real force of eloquence is seen to reside in 
the essential qualities of the inmost affections and ener- 
gies of the soul, which, when stirred to their depths, as the 
love of a Christ-like preacher for his fellow-men and their 
eternal interests can alone do, produce those lasting 
effects, those fruits of the Spirit, which have followed the 
preaching of the Apostles, and of the greatest preachers 
since their day. 

True eloquence can be distinguished from false elo- 
quence, or false sensationalism, in these ways : that the 
true is thorough in knowledge, while the false is super- 
ficial ; the true has moral earnestness, while the false has 
no depth of real sincerity ; the true aims for the produc- 
tion of character, the false aims to produce an excite- 
ment ; the true is enduring, while the false is ephemeral ; 
the true strives through impression for ultimate comic- 



The " Preparatory Service? 279 

tion, while the false strives merely for immediate sensa- 
tion ; the true ends in the subject, the false ends in self; 
the true springs from religious enthusiasm, while the false 
springs from a love of intellectual display; the true is 
deep and spiritual, while the false plays upon the senses, 
the superficial nerves of feeling, the outer surface of the 
mind. 

11 During my short ministry of five years, the i Pre- 
paratory Service* before each Communion season 

has been very trying to me, — the subject-matter 

and the choice of texts alike troubling me greatly. 

Of course, so long as tJie texts in 1 Cor. xi. 

26-29 supplied material, I experienced no wa?it. 

I have also used texts relating to the Passover, 

and some from \st John. But I never have that 
freedom in preparing for this office that I enjoy 

in my ordinary pulpit ministration. Can you help 

me ? " 

The question, springing from so earnest a desire, 
assuredly bears with it no implied thought that the 
u Preparatory Service " itself is an unnecessary or un- 
reasonable one. It seems to be rather regarded as an 
extraordinary one. It is, truly, a most rational service, 
for there is, in a healthy mind, a sense of dignity which 
forbids it to enter thoughtlessly on any great act. Fools 
rush in where angels fear to tread. Surprise has been 
called an element of beauty, but it may be an element 
of confusion. When a young man, I once visited Pales- 
tine. We had climbed to the top of a steep hill, from 



280 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

which it was expected that Jerusalem would be seen, 
but it proved not to be so. My state of expectation 
therefore subsided, and after riding quietly on without 
incident for a while, by a sudden turn we came unex- 
pectedly in full sight of the holy city crowning a distant 
eminence, and so great was my surprise, that I found 
myself on my knees upon the ground with hardly a 
consciousness of what I was doing. The thoughts that 
rushed torrent-like into the mind overcame me ; and 
when I rose I walked bare-headed all the way until we 
passed into the gate of the city. This was not a singu- 
lar experience. The same thing has happened to other 
travellers ; and, in the time of the Crusades, we know 
how a whole host was moved simultaneously by the 
thoughts and eternal associations connected with this 
spot. The mind craves some sort of preparation or 
self-adjustment in order to meet a great event, to be 
ushered into a great presence, to come up to a lofty 
height of experience, intellectual or spiritual. One's 
republican pride would prevent him from being dis- 
turbed at the sight of a king, but to meet a man like 
Napoleon, or Bismarck, or a poet like Goethe, or a truly 
holy man whose godlike deeds had proved him to be 
filled with the very spirit of God, we should desire to 
collect our thoughts and to try to lessen the distance 
between ourselves and these men by rising, as it were, to 
the best of the common humanity which exists in all. 
In like manner, a thoughtful man would not care to step 
into the chamber of a dying person, without an internal 
prayer to bring the soul into accord with the scene and 
the approach to eternal realities. 



The " Preparatory Service? 281 

But the instances noted are small and earthly when 
compared with the approach to the scene of the Lord's 
Supper. Without wishing to give it more of mystic 
import than the Scriptures warrant, there is cause to 
hold it as the highest act of Christian worship. For 
while a bloodless sacrifice, it is still the spiritual present- 
ation of the offering of the Lamb of God for our sins. 
It embodies the central truth of the gospel. The divine 
and the human blend together as in no other act of 
religion. The Eternal Son of God took our human 
nature upon him in order that by his sacrifice he 
might redeem it from sin and give it eternal life. And 
this is the record that God hath given to us, eternal life, 
and this life is in His Son. According to the gospel, 
this is the source of our spiritual life. Whether the 
words of Christ apply directly to the Lord's Supper or 
not, and while explaining them as they should be ex- 
plained in a spiritual sense, it is true that " Except ye 
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, 
ye have no life in you." 

And yet, again, the presence of the Lord himself at 
his table is so especially implied and vouchsafed, that 
to come there thoughtless and unprepared in heart and 
life is not only opposed to Christian reason but is in- 
curring weighty responsibility. 

The " Preparatory Lecture," as it is called in New 
England, is an honoured institution. President Stiles, 
of Yale College, in the last century alludes frequently 
in his journal to his " Sacramental Lecture," as he terms 
it ; but this is not to be confounded with the Thursday 
evening " lecture " of still older Pilgrim times, though 



282 Horcz Homileticcz. 

it may have united with that or grown out of it. In all 
Christian churches, a service of this kind is the recognition 
of the need of the Church's preparation for its loftiest 
and sweetest act of adoring consecration. The Primi- 
tive Church celebrated it in the gloom of the Catacomb 
on the altar-tomb of a martyr. The " Retreats" of the 
Catholic Church, for the purpose of meditation and 
prayer, have also the nature of this work of preparation 
to bring back the heart to its highest love and service. 
While more of the spirit of meditation and devotion 
should be mingled with it, it is well that in New England 
it continues to be a simple lecture, not a formal sermon. 
It is mainly practical and instructive. It is the familiar 
talk of the spiritual guide of the household, and is all, as 
it were, within the family, to prepare its members for 
the presence of the divine Master among them. Not 
that he is not with them always, but there are times of 
more special, tender, and solemn interview, when, as it 
were, the doors are shut, the world and its noises are 
heard no more, and in the silence of self- recollection 
Christ presents himself for the love and affectionate 
intercourse of his believing ones. 

The topics for this " Preparatory Service " would 
seem naturally to divide themselves into three classes, 
namely, clear instruction in regard to the historical foun- 
dation and the doctrine of the Lord's Supper ; practical 
suggestions or lessons as to self-examination in the reli- 
gious life ; incitement to higher personal love of and 
closer spiritual union with Christ. 

1. In regard to the historic origin of the Lord's 
Supper, not only the passage alluded to by my corre- 



The " Preparatory Service? 283 

spondent in the eleventh chapter of First Corinthians, 
but the fifth chapter also, where allusion is made to the 
Hebrew Passover, is applicable \ and this would open 
the whole series of texts from the Old Testament having 
reference to the original germ of the Passover and the 
ancient covenant of God with His people, of which the 
feast of the Lord's Supper is the finished antitype. 
The frequent passages in the prophetic books of the Old 
Testament and the Psalms, pointing to the greater 
offering that was preparing, and the moral teaching that 
runs through them, are directly appropriate. It is a 
mistake ministers sometimes make that the Old Testa- 
ment can afford them no material for this service. But 
the actual institution of the Supper as given us in the 
Gospels, and especially the narrative of John's Gospel, 
with the discourses of Christ in the thirteenth, four- 
teenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters, 
form the best sources of teaching for this occasion. 
Preachers really have no right to preach a formal sermon 
on any and every Christian topic in an indiscriminate 
fashion to meet this emergency, when there is so much 
specific material at hand. The development, too, of 
doctrine, — especially of the doctrine of the Incarnation 
and Atonement, as taught in the fifth chapter of Romans, 
second of Colossians, fifth of Ephesians, and indeed in 
every epistle of the New Testament, belongs essentially 
to this preparatory service. Here we come to the root- 
idea of sacrifice for sin. What Christ is in his relations 
to all men, and especially to believers ; that " God was 
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself; " that 
Christ is the true Vine who both bears us and spiritually 



284 Horcz Hotnileticcz. 

nourishes us with his own blood, — this is to be set 
forth. The mystery of redemption is here, not entirely 
to be explained, as no sacrifice of love, even by the 
human heart, is entirely to be explained, but affording 
a theme for inexhaustible study and thought. The 
doctrine also of the unity of the Church, as presented 
in the very words of the institution of the Supper, as 
well as in the tenth chapter of the First of Corinthi- 
ans, opens another field of practical instruction. Incar- 
nation, Atonement, Reconciliation, the Unity of the 
Church and the Communion of Saints, are some of the 
doctrines that cluster about this sacred feast. This is 
especially an occasion for the building up of believers 
in the faith, and in the doctrine of Christ, itself being 
the most lively and powerful preacher. 

2. The apostle says : " Let a man examine himself, 
and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup." 
The duty of self-examination which has sometimes been 
carried to an extreme of self-inquisition, thus becoming 
a curse instead of a blessing, a poison instead of a med- 
icine, is, nevertheless, when wholesomely exercised, en- 
joined both by Scripture and reason. We ought now 
and then to stop in the rush of life and ask ourselves 
what we are and whither tending, or how can we know 
what our true condition is. There is no simpler and 
better rule of religious self-examination than to lay our- 
selves alongside the requirements of the Ten Command- 
ments as interpreted by the higher spiritual law of Christ, 
the law of love, including the two great classes of duties 
toward God and toward our neighbour. To lecture in 
a practical or heart- searching but kind way on the com- 



The " Preparatory Service? 285 

mandments, from the Christian point of view, would be 
greatly profitable. Hence spring amendment and resti- 
tution. Hence, above all, springs humility, without 
which we are truly unworthy to approach the Feast. 
Purity guards it with a flaming sword. Malice, impure- 
ness, unforgiveness, hate, pride, love of power, covet- 
ousness. hypocrisy, deceit, and all uncharitableness flee 
from it, and we feed upon the unleavened bread of 
sincerity and truth. The feast is a holy feast. Repent- 
ance is its real preparation. 

3. Incitement to the higher love of and the closer 
union with Christ and the brethren, seems to have been 
the disciples' chief preparation by the Lord himself for 
the Last Supper. Here the words of the Lord in John's 
Gospel, and the words of the Holy Spirit, who is also 
called "the Spirit of Christ" in the epistles of John, 
especially the first of them, are our best guides. We 
kindle the fire at its source. We draw close to the 
Saviour's heart. As it is sometimes celebrated, the 
Lord's Supper is indeed but a cold memorial. It should 
be filled with an affectionate tenderness and a heavenly 
love. Its very preparation should stir the fountains both 
of human and divine love as the angel of the Lord came 
down and stirred the waters of healing and blessing. 
Thus the highest note of the feast of the Lord's Supper 
is really not faith, nor repentance, nor even love, but 
joy, — as in the old Moravian hymn : — 

"Come, approach to Jesus' table, 
Taste that food incomparable, 
Which to us is freely given 
As an antepast of heaven." 



286 Horcz Honiileticcz. 

Will yon give a criticism of the following plan 
of a sermon which was lately preached, not with- 
out effect, at the opening of a series of revival 
services ? 

i Sam. x. 26. "And there went with him a band of 
men whose hearts God had touched." 

With what glowing prospects does Saul, the new- 
crowned king, begin his reign; chosen by God himself; 
gifted with an impressive physical presence ; filled with the 
Spirit of God ; accepted and supported by all the people, 
and especially surrounded by such a noble body-guard. 

I. God, in touching the hearts of these men, filled 
them — 

1 st. With reverence for the cause of which he was the 
representative. 

2d. With devotion to him as that representative. 
3d. With a commendable zeal in service to that cause. 
4th. With wisdom and ability as councillors. 
5 th. With personal unselfishness in their service. 

II. Every chosen servant of God needs to-day as a 
body-guard, "a band of men whose hearts God has 
touched." 

1 st. With the zeal of pardon and acceptance. 

2d. With a sanctified zeal in God's service. 

3d. With a burning desire for the salvation of souls. 

4th. With a mighty faith in God as to the results of the 
work. 

Not quite enough of the plan has been here given to 
indicate the thought pursued beyond the most general 
idea, and it is difficult to see where the main stress of the 



Criticism of a Sermon. 2 B ~ 

sermon lies. No doubt it was effective* the earn 

of the preacher and the occasion tended to make it so : 
but we should see :. m in the plan, — as in the 

E of Dr. BoshnelTs sermons, his very plans re~ 
the peculiar power of tl It ran through 

the bones. The text is a happy one, as well as the sub- 
ject drawn from it. An accommodated text is often in- 

: sting in itself when, as in the present instance, tfa 
is a real resemblance of ideas between the original and 
the applied use of it. - : both are based on the same 

fundamental principle. There is, in such a case, no 

ned or J similarity, even if there be no ; 

identity of ideas. The devotion to a good cause and to 
its chosen leader, is found in the passage as it .curs in 
the First Book jt Sam I rise in the -ermon wherein 

the preacher employs i: s text It >e of 

God in both c r Saul was anointed by the prophet, 

in the prophet's own words, to u renew the kingdc: 
It was in both cases to build up the true Isr 

The principal rhetorical criticism of this plan is. that 
instead of making two grand divisions with regul : 
under them, the first applying to Saul and the second to 
the spiritual leadership of the Church, it would have been 
better to put all th -aid concerning Saul in the intro- 

duction, which is really here the explanation of the text and 
its circumstances, thus furnishing an opportunity to g 
in a natural and interesting way the account of Saul and 
his relations to the kingdom of Israel in his day. A on _ 
nificent character, this S I, both for good and evil, and 
full of moral lessons. His life is a trage • n with 

full and powerful strokes of the inspired pencil. It forms 



288 Horce Hornileticcz. 

one of the most dramatic and pathetic, as well as morally 
forcible histories of the Old Testament \ and this intro- 
duction would be a basis for the instruction of the sermon, 
and would lend a living organic unity to the whole. I 
would thus, after this historical introduction, deduce from 
it a general proposition of a more spiritual nature, and 
found my real sermon on this proposition. As it is, there 
are two formal grand divisions, the one of Saul and the 
other of sermon. So that there is a tendency to rnonoto- 
nousness in the treatment, and much force of fresh appli- 
cation is lost. In the plan given, just the same qualities of 
zeal, devotion, and unselfish service described in the first 
division, are repeated inevitably in the second, with only 
differing circumstances. There is no progress in the 
thought. 

In the phraseology, too, of the divisions, or of the 
statement of heads, the language, as it seems to me, is not 
simple enough. The adjectives " sanctified," " burning," 
" mighty," are unnecessary \ and " the seal of pardon and 
acceptance" is a phrase which some in the congregation 
might not understand. If simple language is found any- 
where it should be in the plan. We wish to have divisions 
— the turning points of the discourse — to be unadorned. 
They should be plain solid statements, as plain as possible, 
of propositions to be proved, and nothing more. 

In the second grand division, as it stands, the second 
and third subordinate heads are too much alike to be 
made separate heads at all, and, therefore, one of them 
is unnecessary ; it is, indeed, rare that a sermon needs 
more than three divisions, and more divisions usually 
make scattering fire. 



* I 



Criticism of a Sermon. 2 89 



The real unity of a sermon drawn from this passage 
lies in the phrase, " whose hearts God had touched. 
This is its deepest thought, — the root of all. It was no 
mere human interest with which these hearts were moved 
having in it the elements of time, change, and selfishness, 
but it was a divine interest wrought by the Spirit of God, 
aiming at His kingdom and pure of all lower worldly ends. 
It was eternal in its nature, and, in a Christian sense, 
sprang from the love of Christ, or personal union with 
him in his work. This is the under-current of the theme, 
its main thought, which, in some way or another, should 
be wrought into every portion of the sermon. 

To reconstruct the plan in a more compact way, to 
give it effective unity, and to put it also into more every- 
day language, and yet to preserve its good points, it 
might, perhaps, be recast, I venture to suggest, into 
something like this form : — 

Int?'oduction. — The graphic pourtrayal of the history of 
Saul and his relations to the Kingdom of God in his day, 
his virtues, supernatural aids and opportunities, weak- 
nesses, and crimes ; his beginnings in the obedience of 
God and his terrible fall from God's favour ; and, as drawn 
directly from the lessons of his life, and of this special 
passage of his life taken as a text, the 

General Proposition. — The need of men divinely 
fitted to support their chosen leaders in the work of God's 
kingdom. 

1 st. Of men whose hearts are renewed by the Holy 
Spirit. 

2d. Of men who have a Christlike desire to save their 
fellow- men. 

19 



290 Horcz Homileticce. 

3d. Of men with faith in the success of God's work. 

Conclusion. — The lessons from such a subject are 
many and rich. Certainly two might be mentioned in 
which the preacher could make for himself room to say 
the most heart-searching as well as encouraging and prac- 
tical words, calculated to stir up his own and the Church's 
activity. 

1. A lesson to ministers. Ministers can do more 
through inspiring and setting others to work than they 
can through their own exclusive labours however faithful 
and exhausting. This is a great gift of wisdom. They 
themselves are multiplied a hundred-fold. This has been 
true of the most successful preachers. A working church 
in which every talent is brought out for the good of men 
is a minister's epistle known and read of all, his most 
eloquent preaching. 

2. A lesson to the Church. Earnest prayer is needed 
for the Holy Spirit to awaken new love and zeal in the 
work of building up the kingdom of God. 

It is my hearers who say that I am a very powerful 
preacher; and I have, indeed, rarely had a regu- 
lar and attentive listener who was not converted 
to Christ. But my preaching is net attractive. 
Men are not drawn to listen to me, and frequently 
they are repelled. Ought I to make my preaching 
less evangelical, forcible, and pungent? Ought I 
to try more to please men and less to persuade them 
to repent and believe ? I know I desire the salva- 
tion of men; that I would count it a light thing 



Attractive Preaching. 291 

to die to save the souls about me. But I seem to 

be repelling men instead of drawing them. What 

shall I do ? 

It is quite impossible for me to speak regarding a 
stranger, but this seems to me a voice of almost painful 
sincerity ; and yet a man who believes he has by his 
preaching led souls to Christ, should feel encouraged 
and rewarded. In so far as one has done this, let him 
truly rejoice and go on doing the same ; for it is not 
every minister who can speak so confidently of the good 
results of his labours. It may be that the preacher is 
unfortunately placed. The round peg has got into the 
square hole, or the square peg into the round hole. 
That sometimes happens. Divine grace would not have 
fitted the apostle Peter to do the apostle John's work. 
He who breaks up the fallow ground is not always the 
one who garners the harvest. No genuine labourer's work 
is lost. A man who is ready to die for others, whether 
he please them or not, will influence them as no smooth- 
tongued rhetorician can. Yet the power to win men 
may be wanting. What is attractiveness in a preacher? 
It is the same thing of its kind though not degree that 
made Christ attractive. It is the Christlike spirit, so 
difficult to describe and analyze, but in which the divine 
elements of persuasion are mixed, — the righteousness in 
which the Father's will is supreme ; the spotless purity ; 
the courage that meets with serenity every evil ; the 
self-sacrifice that drinks the cup of suffering to its dregs ; 
the humility that is willing to become as the offscouring 
of the earth to reach the lowliest ; the forgivenesss that 
passes by injuries ; the love that takes the foulest into 



292 Horcz Honiileticcz. 

its embrace and lays down life to cleanse and save sinful 
humanity. How rare for the preacher to have these 
Christlike elements of persuasion even imperfectly ! One 
may preach powerfully the doctrine of fear, and more 
than that, may have risen to a higher apprehension of 
truth and of the mind, so that he has learned to preach 
" right," and to drive the shaft home to the reason and 
conscience, who yet may not have learned to preach the 
gospel, — the thing that wins, or divine love to sinners. 
This is the all-comprehending love by which a man (since 
he is made so) is compelled to love God because God 
loves him. When he knows and believes this he yields. 
It is divine love that wins as does human love at last, for 
you cannot convince a man into heaven any more than 
you can drive him. 

It may possibly be that it is only a little thing after all 
that makes a good man unattractive, — an ungracious 
manner that freezes up the current of personal magnetism, 
or a harsh voice (that was the reason of Savonarola's ill- 
success in the pulpit till he remedied it), or a dogmatic 
method of argumentation, or an abstract style of meta- 
physical circuitousness, or a rhetorical superficiality that 
glitters but does not warm and penetrate, or an awkward 
delivery, or a drawling accent, — some little thing, but 
still offensive to persons who cannot recognize real man- 
hood and true worth beneath a repelling exterior. The 
Abbe* Maury recommended to a young preacher that he 
should now and then burn some grains of incense to the 
graces ; one might do this without becoming a pulpit 
courtier, which is worse, if anything, than a pulpit 
buffoon. 



Christ's Temptation, 293 

How may we use such a truth and class of truths as 
Christ's temptation in the wilderness, belonging 
to his supernatural nature, for instruction i7i the 
pulpit ? Was He a subject for such temptation as 
assails men, or could He have yielded to temptation 
like others ? 

These questions are quite deep and it would take long 
to answer them. I can only assert the general principle 
that what our Lord was, while in this world, was meant 
for our instruction in righteousness, and that nothing is 
affirmed more clearly in the Scriptures. Nothing hap- 
pened to or was allowed to be recorded of him that was 
not designed for the imitation of the human soul, for the 
redemption of men from the power of evil, and for their 
culture in the spiritual life. His were the acts of the 
ideal man who gathered humanity into himself, as a 
perfect example, and who came into the world to mani- 
fest God in humanity, and to enshrine himself within 
the human spirit ; the kingdom he founded was within 
man ; and even in the unique events of his supernatural 
manifestation, in the baptism in w T hich no man could be 
baptized, he never removed himself entirely out of the 
sphere of that humanity which he took that he might 
be a high priest who could be touched with a feeling of 
our infirmities. The Lord's temptation, though alone in 
the wilderness in conflict with the principle of evil, does 
not take itself out of this category, and is one of the 
noblest and even most practical of truths for the Chris- 
tian pulpit, though it cannot be treated in a common 
and hasty way, and with little thought. It peculiarly 



294 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

adapts itself to the profound meditation of young minis- 
ters about to enter upon their life-work, and is fitted to 
search the motives of ministerial character beyond almost 
any portion of the New Testament. It is history and 
likewise symbol. It is fact and also spirit. It occurred 
between the baptism and the entrance of Christ upon 
his public ministry, and it sets the moral standard for the 
trial and establishment of that ministry, and, indeed, for 
the kingdom of God in the world, without which neither 
of them can make headway or prove successful. While 
we should strive to be careful in our reverential respect 
for the divine nature of Christ, yet we may lose even the 
divine lesson of his life if we lose the great lesson of his 
humanity, as the emptying of himself (/ceWri?) of divine 
power and riches, to prove the power of entire depend- 
ence of the human upon the divine will, such as every 
man may realize who follows Christ. 

The decision of the second question whether Christ 
could have yielded to temptation, and if not, would it 
have been a real temptation such as comes to men, is 
predicated upon the truth that if Christ could not sin, he 
was free to sin, and though there was a necessity for him 
not to sin, yet he had the freedom to do so. Our Lord, 
as a man, was temptable, or else the idea of his being 
the Redeemer of all men could not be true \ and tempt- 
ability is not sin. For what is temptation? It is that 
evil power which appeals to a free personality in such a 
way as to give it a direction from good toward evil, and 
when the evil presented becomes a real influence in the 
heart, though not necessarily so that the heart consents 
to it, it forms a temptation. Christ truly was tempted : 



Christ's Temptation. 295 

but it is said of us that we are tempted when we are 
drawn away of our own lusts and enticed. Was Christ 
thus tempted? Or did Christ have a sinful nature? 
Did he have a fallen nature like that derived from 
Adam ? Some go so far as to believe even this, and see 
in it a mighty truth that, in spite of this tremendous fact 
of his assumption of a sinful nature, he did not sin, but 
so went down to the depths of our fallen nature to raise 
us up entirely, completely. But we are not called upon 
to believe this incredible thing, that Christ shared our 
sinful and depraved nature. The new Adam was the 
seed of a new spiritual race that rose from the estate of 
sin into newness of life in Christ Jesus, but he, the un- 
fallen Son of God, stooped very low to raise us up. He 
put on the weakness of humanity. He was tempted like 
as we are, yet without sin. 

Temptation came to Christ, as to every man, in two 
ways, from without and from within. He was tempted 
from without by the condition and circumstances of his 
earthly life. He was a true man and suffered trial by 
hunger, thirst, cold, poverty, bodily injuries, and mental 
griefs, or the bodily and mental trials belonging personally 
to himself, as well as from the allurements of the world, 
and their appeal to human ambition, power, and pleasure. 
He was also capable of being tempted, as a man, from 
within, by spiritual appeals to evil, call them from the 
Evil One, but these temptations which in ordinary men 
appeal to disorderly and ill-regulated desires, found 
nothing to lay hold of in his perfectly pure nature. It 
was then from without, from the wants of the bodily na- 
ture and the allurements of the world, as in the actual 



296 Horce Homileticce. 

temptation recorded in the New Testament, that the 
Son of man seems to have been approached. Here he 
was tempted like unto us. His temptation, therefore, 
though unique, was a true and universal instance of 
human temptation. He w T as here also our brother and 
our example. He alone, however, exhibited divine virtue 
under human conditions. He showed that sin is not an 
essential condition of our human nature, but only an 
incident that springs from our own abnormal weakness 
and fault. Sin does not " have its ground in the organ- 
ism of human nature, but is the rebellion of a created 
will against the divine law, as an act of free-will not 
otherwise to be explained." Thus evil is not a human 
development but a human choice. While Christ, as a 
true man, endowed with free-will, was temptable, yet he 
sinned not, and in a true man, like Christ, there need be 
no sin in his human nature. He overcame temptation as 
a man, through relying upon divine help ; and, therefore, 
he can help those who are tempted, for all can find en- 
couragement in trial and victory in temptation in him who 
met in fair conflict the very power and principle of evil. 
And as it sometimes happens that in the beginning of 
doing Christ's work, the temptation comes to his minis- 
ters to take up the work in their own strength, say of rea- 
son, or scholarship, or character, or intellectual and moral 
power, or lower forces even than these, and not in the 
divine will and power, so the temptation of Christ speaks 
to the ministry as with a voice from heaven. The apostle 
Paul in Arabia, John in Patmos, Luther in Wartburg 
Castle, met the same temptation in the earlier stages of 
their public ministry, and overcame it by looking to Christ 



Christ's Temptation. 297 

and his victory. If there be anything which I have no- 
ticed in others and myself as the ground of failure or 
of small success in the ministerial work, it has been this 
failure to bring the work into subordination to the divine 
conditions of power and success, — the total surrender 
to the will of God ; and not only this, but the willingness 
to do His work in His way, and not in our own. The 
ministry is an intellectual profession, calling upon the 
fullest energies of a consecrated manhood ; and minis- 
ters, as a class, are men of mind, else they would be 
engaged in some lower and less taxing work ; but the 
exercise of the mind gives a sense of power, and this 
awakes a reliance upon self, and sometimes a feeling 
of independence of God. Selfishness in his work is 
a minister's shrewdest temptation. Power in himself 
tempts him to love power for power's sake. To be weak 
is to be miserable, — this is human sentiment ; and to 
be a powerful man, and preach powerful sermons, is com- 
monly held to be the highest praise that could be be- 
stowed ; but the apostolic sentiment was " for when I 
am weak, then am I strong," — strong in a divine fulness 
of power that pours into a human mind which empties 
itself of self-confidence and self-seeking. Not that men- 
tal forces, such as stalwart reasoning and scholarly knowl- 
edge, are of no account ; this would be fanaticism ; but 
that they are not those divine qualities of power in the 
pulpit by which the greatest work man can do is done. 
A London paper, commenting upon an eminent American 
preacher, says : " He leaves no system of theology or 
church government, and his influence therefore ended 
with his life. He was a great preacher, but nothing 



298 Horcz Homileticcz. 

else." If he were a great preacher, his influence is eter- 
nal, and will endure when systems of theology and church 
governments have faded into nothing; but to be this, 
and to do this greatest work, a man must learn some- 
what of that true humility comprehended in Thomas a 
Kempis's wonderful words, " ama nesciri" 

In doing God's work, a man cannot grasp for that king- 
dom of the world which Satan ever promises him. The 
struggle surely will come to the best, and the choice will 
be seductively presented when he must decide whether he 
will work by his own power and in accord with his own 
will, or in self-denial and submission to the will of God. 
He will choose between the kingdom of the world and 
the kingdom of God. The tendency that corrupted the 
apostolic church, and reared in its place a vast system 
of worldly power, was this departure from the original 
idea of the ministry as a pure instrument of the will of 
God. To preach the Word in the wisdom of men, and 
through learning, eloquence, logic, authority, riches and 
power of the world, was not for the building up of a 
spiritual, but of an external kingdom, false to the core, 
whether in the fourth or nineteenth century. If ministers 
show themselves as greedy for power, place, fame, honours, 
emoluments, as men of other professions and the world, 
they may gain their reward, but they bid adieu to the 
advancement of the gospel through their agency. Christ's 
work must be kept pure from the world. This was the 
teaching of Christ's temptation, and it revealed the di- 
vine foundation of his spiritual kingdom of faith, love, 
and righteousness. " Not by might, nor by power, but 
by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." Christ conquered 



Relations of Preaching to the Church, 299 

evil by refusing to use any worldly weapon in a spiritual 
warfare. His children were not to strive. They were to 
lose their life. They were to give up the world. They 
were to overcome evil with good. They were to suffer 
persecution. They were not to halve power with Caesar. 
They were not to depend upon money. They were not 
to be great in the mere worldly sense. They were not 
to seem but to be devout. They were to seek not the 
praise of men but of God. They were to bear reproach 
with meekness. They were to meet opposition with 
gentleness. They were to preach the gospel of repent- 
ance and reconciliation. They were to subdue the world 
with love. They were, like Christ, not to do their own 
will, but the will of Him who sent them ; and then the 
tempter would no longer assail them, and angels would 
minister to them, and they would be nourished by the 
bread of God, and be able to feed others with that bread 
which came down from heaven. 

What are the relations of preaching to the Church ? 

The question is a timely one. If its answer lead away 
from strict homiletics to a discussion of the nature and 
foundations of the church, its important bearing upon 
preaching and upon the minister's whole work will be 
perceived at once. The minister is connected with a 
system, and the present is a period of notable neglect 
of systems and institutions. It is a marked feature of 
the time that it seeks the substance beneath the form ; 
that it cares little for professions, and looks to the spirit 
and life of whatever challenges its regard. To appear- 
ance it is not a believing age ; it is full of doubts ; and 



300 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

without regretting this, let us have faith that good surely 
will come out from the clash of opinions, and that the 
questioning and restless state of things will be only trans- 
itional to something higher and better. But while we 
love the spiritual truth, and while Christian faith is an 
inward life and " the kingdom of God is not in word but 
in power," yet in this age's disregard of the form and 
its desire to come at the life-principle, is it not in dan- 
ger of breaking that simple form, that beautiful and 
essential body in which God has enshrined truth? Is 
it not in danger of becoming so inward that it shall 
withdraw from the sphere of the actual, and lose itself 
in the depths of an intellectual spiritualism ? It is good, 
now and then, in spite of fears we may justly have of 
formalism and ritualism, to look at the other side, and 
to speak of the outward things which are not often 
treated of, but which, properly regarded, are instruments 
of religious discipline and growth, — such as public wor- 
ship, Christian nurture and membership, religious ordi- 
nances and sacraments, and the church itself, which 
comprehends them all. Church professions and obliga- 
tions — outward things — are often held to be of no 
special value ; and they are dissolved in this fine al- 
chemy of speculative thought that we all love, so that 
there is a vast deal of practical " come-outerism " which 
is really injurious to the cause of Christ and men's best 
interests. Preachers preach almost in vain when this is so. 
And this, too, does not always spring from a real humility, 
a genuine feeling of unworthiness, such as is manifested 
in some of the most rare and lovely characters we 
see among us, but from thoughtless disregard of and 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 301 

proud feeling of superiority to Christ's words. Now, un- 
doubtedly it is true that he that believeth shall be saved ; 
but yet it is written : " He that believeth and is bap- 
tized shall be saved." I suppose the meaning of these 
words to be this, that though faith is the essential thing 
for salvation, baptism was instituted as the mode of for- 
mally entering upon that new life of faith which was to 
be proclaimed by the apostles and preachers of the gos- 
pel, — as that outward act, that consecrating rite, by 
which the faith of Christ was to be confessed before 
men. Soon after these words of our Lord were spoken, 
on the day of Pentecost, when three thousand souls were 
awakened by Peter's preaching, he said to them, in an- 
swer to their question, "What shall we do?" "Re- 
pent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of 
Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall re- 
ceive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Would it seem from 
this that baptism was regarded as an unimportant thing 
by the apostle Peter ; and was not in fact the fullest gift 
of the Holy Spirit, the gift of spiritual power, made to 
follow upon the baptism of the penitent believer, as be- 
ing the appointed way of investing him with the new 
faith, and incorporating him into the visible body of 
Christ? And this would apply to the sacrament of the 
Lord's supper, which was also established by Christ 
among the last things for the perpetual observance of 
his church. 

The Puritan, in his desire to bring the truth home 
to the individual heart, and to do away with a human 
mediatorship, almost lost sight of the idea of the church. 
At all events, other Reformed churches of Europe — of 



302 Horce Homileticcz. 

France, Germany, and Switzerland — have always held 
more strongly to the church-idea, and have built them- 
selves more upon it than have the Puritans of England 
and America ; but whichever is right, no Protestant, or, 
much more, Christian, will deny that a visible church, 
representing the company of believers and the kingdom 
of God on earth, was instituted ; and that through its 
ordinances, word, ministry, and loving service of the 
Master in carrying out his purpose to save man, it bears 
some essential relation to the spiritual recovery of our 
race. The more the world goes on in religious advance- 
ment, the more exactly identical will the visible and in- 
visible church grow \ for the church is mother of us 
all who are "baptized into Christ ;" and the fast pre- 
vailing opinion that a man may choose to remain out 
of the pale of the church and be a church to himself, is 
unscriptural, — for none can secede from the common 
faith, altar, and table, and still be obedient to the Lord's 
words. " There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism." 

I look upon the visible church as in one sense a 
divine institution, and in another sense as a human in- 
stitution sanctioned and blessed by God, and rendered 
the vehicle of His grace so far as it is a true instrument 
of the conservation and propagation of Christian faith. 
When it loses this character it ceases to be a true church. 
I can see no reason to conceive that it was supernatu- 
rally ordained in all its detail, — that it is not in this 
respect now radically different from its Jewish prede- 
cessor. I doubt not it was full of human error from the 
first, the apostles themselves repressing but not extirpat- 
ing all false notions of doctrine and life ; but I imagine 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 303 

that the true church, as a spiritual power co-ordinate 
with the Word and the Spirit, is realized through a vis- 
ible system of organization and ordinances, which, how- 
ever, is by no means confined to any particular churchly 
organization \ but so far as any one answers its great 
end better than another, so far it is a more divine organ 
of the Spirit. Each church, as we familiarly call it, con- 
tains some element of truth, and gives it a fuller expres- 
sion than any other ; but while the true church is thus 
exclusively identified with no particular church or sect, 
yet the one church of Christ, with its divine word and 
ordinances, has its place, instrumentally, in the economy 
of salvation, and no man, however good or great, can 
afford to neglect it. 

Before going further, let me say that preaching derives 
an apostolic power and permanent enthusiasm from this 
truth of the unity of the church, infinitely more so than 
from any sectarian view. It gains a lofty, even divine 
vantage-ground. It speaks as one with the spirit of 
God's kingdom that cannot be divided, and as with His 
voice. The preacher is clothed with a heavenly author- 
ity when he preaches not as the messenger of a church 
(perhaps in some obscure city street), but of the church 
of Christ. Let me dwell upon this. The best minds, 
discerning the original unity of plan in men's natures, 
have yearned for a religious unification of the race. 
The longings for the " City of God " have been trans- 
ferred by great and devout minds to a future state, only 
because it seemed impossible that there should be even 
an approximate realization of this high and joyful truth 
on earth. Roman Catholicism, from an inherent error 



304 Horce Homileticcz. 

in its theory, has not succeeded in its attempt to carry 
out the idea of a universal church ; but this ill success 
by no means proves that the idea is not philosophical, 
is not one true in the nature of things, is not Scriptural 
and realizable. As sure as men, made of one blood, 
shall at length be united in a broad political brother- 
hood or confederation of states, if called by different 
names, recognizing the equal rights of each nation and 
each man before the law, and binding themselves to 
mutual acts and responsibilities for each other's welfare, 
— a republic of God, — so there shall be a like union 
in religion, a world-church comprehending the race, one 
holy Catholic Church, whose members are members one 
of another, recognizing each other in every right, sym- 
pathy, duty, and responsibility, and bound together by 
one spirit. The church of the first disciples was the 
" one body " of Christ. " For as the body is one and 
hath many members, and all the members of that one 
body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ ; for 
by one spirit we are all baptized into one body." There 
was a true corporate union existing among all the various 
members of Christ's body, the church, — not merely a 
spiritual, but an organic, union. This union embraced 
all believers, and was as wide as the world. Neander 
speaks thus of the apostolic church : " But this con- 
sciousness of the divine life received from Christ is 
necessarily followed by the recognition of a communion 
which embraces all mankind, and passes beyond the 
boundaries of earthly existence ; the consciousness of 
the Holy Spirit as the spirit producing and animating 
this communion ; the consciousness of the unity of 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 305 



the divine life shared by all believers, — a unity which 
counterbalances all other differences existing among 
mankind, — as had been already manifested at the first 
promulgation of Christianity, when the most marked con- 
trarieties arising from religion, national peculiarities, or 
mental culture, were reconciled, and the persons whom 
they had kept at a distance from each other became 
united in vital communion. " And again he says : "This 
is no abstract representation, but a truly living reality. If 
in all the widely spread Christian communities, amid all 
the diversity of human peculiarities animated by the 
same spirit, only the consciousness of this higher unity 
and communion were retained, as St. Paul desired, this 
would be the most glorious appearing of the one Chris- 
tian church in which the kingdom of God represents 
itself on earth ; and no outward constitution, no system 
of episcopacy, no council, still less any organization by 
the State, which would substitute something foreign to 
its nature, could render the idea of the Christian church 
more real or concrete." 

To bring this idea of the one apostolic and universal 
church into something like a definite statement, I would 
say, that he who studies with unprejudiced mind the 
account of the planting of the primitive church, freeing 
his mind from the influence of subsequent historical 
development and following the New Testament, must 
come to the conclusion that, during the life of the apos- 
tles, who, under Christ established the constitution of 
the church, the Christian church was formed of various 
communities of believers, in and out of Jerusalem, and 
also in cities and nations other than Jewish, who, though 

20 



306 Horcz Homileticcz. 

differentiated, still held together as members of one or- 
ganism, with recognized relations to each other, and with 
mutual duties and responsibilities arising from such a 
corporate union. They were one body. The apostles 
never thought of anything else. Christ was not divided. 
The doings of the church in Antioch were a common 
and serious concern of the church in Jerusalem. A man 
was a member of the church of Christ rather than the 
church of Jerusalem. The church at Jerusalem was 
only one of the doors, or inlets, by which he entered 
into the temple and kingdom of Christ. This kingdom 
was world-wide ; this church was a universal church. It 
was a greater idea than that of the Roman empire. An 
idea like that fired the hearts of the first preachers to go 
forth to the conquest of the whole world for Christ, and 
because we have lost this great idea we have grown cold 
in our zeal for the world's redemption. We demur 
about sending a missionary to the heathen whose heart 
is glowing with the love of Christ and ready to shed its 
life-blood in his service, if his head may have at any 
time indulged a theological speculation in regard to the 
future. The one is positive, the other negative. The 
one is the impelling power, the other the philosophic 
thought. Not so did the primitive church act. It would 
never have accomplished what it did if it had so acted. 
The Peters and Thomases, and those who followed Christ, 
and those who followed not with these but by faith cast 
out devils in his name, were welcomed by him in the 
work of preaching the gospel, as one in the spirit, love, 
and headship of Christ. The preacher to the heathen 
must be inspired with the consciousness of his own liv- 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 307 

ing union and the church's living union with Christ, and 
then he has the powers of the eternal world behind him, 
and he goes forth in "the fulness of the blessing of the 
gospel of Christ." And so of every preacher in every 
pulpit at home. The growing tendency to denomination- 
alism at the West, is not so good a sign as the opposite 
and nobler tendency to unity, for the great purposes of 
preaching. 

I have been speaking upon the influence of the truth 
of the unity of the Church, as related to the power of 
the preacher; that his message gained by this truth pro- 
portionally in impetus and authority, as the voice of 
a whole nation uttered through its representative is 
weightier than that of an individual man. In unity is 
strength. In the apostolic Church there was this unity 
though in diversity; but the diversity was as nothing 
to the unity, since the diversity was human and the unity 
divine. Even in the apostles' time differences existed 
between the Jewish and Hellenic churches ; but these 
did not break the union, they did not divide the body 
of Christ. True brotherhood, communion, equality, 
sympathy, the reciprocal reference of difficulties, the 
acknowledgment of mutual responsibility and help, the 
recognition of Christ's true ministers and preachers, con- 
tinued unbroken. It was a real and organic union, where- 
as with us it is an ideal and theoretic union. But here 
was a type of the Christian Church absolutely realized. 
From this divine type, received fresh from the hands of 
Christ, — from this perfect and glorious body of Christ, 
which shone before the eyes of the first disciples in sim- 
ple but resplendent beauty, — the church soon departed. 



308 Horcz Homileticce. 

It could not sustain the unity in its purity, and therefore 
its message, its preaching became weak. It fell away 
from the Head, and thus also the body was broken into 
many irreconcilable parts and schisms. To this apostolic 
unity, if we wish the Church to speak as with one voice, 
and with power, we must return, keeping it ever in view 
as a stimulating aim. 

In the first place, no national or denominational church 
is spoken of in the New Testament. There is no " church 
of Asia," or " church of Europe \ " no " Greek church," 
or " Latin church." There are churches of Asia and 
of Macedonia, but there is not even the church of a city. 
Spoken of exclusively as such, it is the " church at Jeru- 
salem," the " church at Ephesus," the community of 
believers who are collected in a certain city, by which 
local or geographical name it is most conveniently desig- 
nated. The writers of the New Testament give no 
authority to the view that the church of Christ is nar- 
rowed down or applied to a nation, a province, a city, 
a denomination. " For while one saith, ' I am of Paul ; ' 
and another, < I am of Apollos ; ' are ye not carnal ? Who, 
then, is Paul, and who is x\pollos, but ministers by w T hom 
ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? For 
other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which 
is Jesus Christ." Can we doubt that the same apostolic 
rebuke applies in its spirit to that denominationalism — 
in so far as it is divisive and built upon human founda- 
tion — which is expressed in the name of Lutheran, Cal- 
vinistic, Wesleyan, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, 
Congregationalist, whether the name sprang from a min- 
ister, an office, a rite, or a polity? Who can doubt that 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 309 

the war-names of Roman Catholic and Protestant lie 
under the same apostolic censure, and that when the 
church returns to the pure types set by Christ and his 
apostles, they will vanish away? 

The word " church," unless I am greatly in error, 
applies — 

1. To all true believers who have ever existed, who 
compose the whole body of Christ, — " the general as- 
sembly and church of the first-born, which are written 
in heaven." 

2. To all Christ-confessing disciples of whatever name 
or race on earth, — there is no " colour-line " here, — the 
whole visible church of Christ, as in the passages : " The 
Lord added to the church daily such as should be 
saved ; " " Give none offence, neither to the Jews nor 
to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God." 

3. To every distinct community, assembly, or even 
household of Christian believers gathered together for 
the purpose of religious worship and service in any given 
place, as " The church which was in Jerusalem," "The 
church which is in his house." 

These three instances cover the use of the word in the 
New Testament. The more comprehensive use evidently 
originates and modifies the more restricted uses. First 
the one, then the many. The term represents the real 
body of Christ, either as a universal whole, or as an inte- 
gral part and member of this whole. The arm is not the 
body, but we call it our body. The member of the body 
of Christ which was represented by the church at Antioch, 
was still one with the body of which Christ was the Head. 
Tt represented a variety in unity. It expressed a living 



310 Horce Hornileticcz. 



union, not life isolated and independent, but life spring- 
ing from and nourished by the one common service, — 
" for by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." 

Roman Catholicism has failed to realize the unity of 
the church. In the lines of hierarchical church govern- 
ment, by labouring to bring about an external uniformity 
in organization and rule founded upon a jure divino as- 
sumption, the problem cannot be solved. The dominion 
that Innocent III. laid upon the whole world and all its 
powers has been growing less and less, and that arro- 
gated ecclesiastical unity, or universality, which is viti- 
ated by the fact that an earthly head is put in place of 
the spiritual head, has been passing slowly off the surface 
of the world like a cloud, nation after nation emerging 
into the light of a clearer faith. I do not say this in 
hostility to the Roman Church, or in denial of its claims 
to being historically and essentially a Christian church, 
though bound to great errors ; but I say it has failed to 
represent the apostolic idea of one universal church. I 
honour even the falsified but majestic shadow of this idea 
which Catholicism has held up, and which has given force 
to its preaching and utterances ; and, perhaps, it will be 
her mission, when purified of the Papacy and other 
" adulterating ingredients," as Coleridge calls them, to 
teach us this lesson. 

Not to dwell longer upon the unity of the church, I 
would only add that one practical obstacle in the way to 
this true unity would be removed, when the equal rights 
of all Christian churches should be mutually acknowl- 
edged. A true church of Christ, whatever its name, 
ought to be regarded as entitled to all rights and priv- 



Relations of Preaching to the Church, 31 1 

ileges that belong to a true member of the body of Christ. 
Its ministers, regularly ordained and accredited, whether 
called bishops, priests, or simply ministers and pastors, 
should be recognized by other churches as ministers of 
the church of Christ, especially since ordination does not 
derive its prime validity from the act of man, but the 
appointment of Christ. Its members, under due tests 
and restrictions, should be entitled to the privileges of 
full communion and fellowship in other churches. There 

sjht be, at first, practical difficulties in the way of ear- 
ning out this mode of inter-ecclesiastical action and 
communion, of worship and work ; but the difficulties 
would grow less and less as the churches became more 
pure, more spiritual, more filled with the devotion and 
love of the gospel. Then preaching would be apostolic 
in its range and power. It would flash forth as from the 
cloudy oracle of God's own dwelling. Then we might 
expect great preachers, with a world-message, and with 
Christlike souls that could take in the world. Then they 
would not preach merely as individual men, but as God's 
messengers. Then the old saying would become true, 
that a preacher is not to be heeded till his feet stood 
above the earth. He would not at least stand in the 
cramped pulpit of a sectarian division of the church, 
but would breathe a freer atmosphere. 

To return to the necessity of a visible church in the 
world. Because Christ founded it, as we have seen, 
that is enough ; but we ourselves may see its necessity 
and beauty from the fact that the church is the expression 
of faith, in the world. We may conceive of a great thought 
lying in a man's mind and useful there, in so far as it 



312 Horcz Homileticce. 

serves to expel a base thought ; but is the thought capa- 
ble of accomplishing the good it is fitted to accomplish 
until it express itself in some word or act, some form of 
beauty or power? Had Michael Angelo's conception 
of the dome of St. Peter's, as the Pantheon hung in 
air, never been wrought in stone, would it have moved 
men? Would the creative power of God have been a 
source of blessedness unless He had put it forth in crea- 
tion? Would the invisible God have been made known 
unless He had manifested Himself in the Son, who is the 
power of God unto our salvation? There must be an 
objective form for the faith which men have grasped in 
their spiritual consciousness. The Spirit must organize 
itself into a body fitted for it ; and this is one work of the 
preacher, to be constantly setting forth the faith for 
men's baptism into it, and their embodiment of its life 
into their life. 

Again, the church is the means of concentrating and 
diffusing the gifts of the Spirit ; for although the Divine 
Spirit is immanent in universal humanity, and God is 
never absent from any of His creatures, yet His gracious 
influences, we are led to believe, may not be poured out 
so freely on an unreceptive and unconfessing world. His 
pure gift would thereby be dishonoured, even quenched. 
There must be a fit medium, depositary, receptacle of 
these spiritual impartations, a perennial spring in the hills, 
supplied from above, from which they can flow over the 
world and make it God's garden. This is the church, or 
that humanity which is purified by faith, obedient to the 
will of God, united to Him in love like that of His Son, 
and thus prepared for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 3 1 3 

In the church there is this opening into the heavenly and 
divine. There is a free and filial intercourse with the 
Father and the peaceful inflow of His love and life. 
The Holy Spirit perpetually broods over the earthly and 
imperfect but regenerated church, bringing its chaotic 
elements into heavenly order and harmony, and working 
out a new creation \ " truly our fellowship is with the 
Father and with His Son." The preachers of this true 
church preach "not with enticing words of man's wisdom, 
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power," — 
that the church's faith " should not stand in the wisdom 
of men, but in the power of God." 

Once more, the church forms the witness for the truth 
in the world. The church represents the Word in its 
living purity, grace and power. Who would have pre- 
served even the revealed word in its integrity, had there 
been no church to hand it down from age to age ? The 
written record would have disappeared like the lost books 
of Livy ; or, as containing a reproving and condemnatory 
word to the evil there is in the world, would have been 
buried out of sight and thought of men deeper than did 
ever plummet sound ; and, more than this, How would 
the faith, which comes through the inward reception of 
Christ, have been perpetuated in men's souls without a 
living church in whom he makes his light to shine upon 
the darkness of nature? God sometimes leaves, as it 
were, a local or a national church, which has abandoned 
itself and become formalized, materialized, or rationalized 
(I do not mean in the sense of denying reason its place 
in faith), and then we see how suddenly faith leaves a 
people. The golden candlesticks of the Seven Churches 



314 Horce Homileticce. 

of Asia were removed, and where has gone the apostolic 
faith which burned on them ? Where the church is in 
its purity, there the truth is in its purity and divine power, 
for God has chosen to make His church " the pillar and 
ground of the truth." There is unwonted strife as to 
doctrines of Christian faith pervading the literature, the 
society, the theological schools, and the pulpits of the 
day. But there is one significant fact which may serve to 
assure minds and give them peace, and that is that there 
is a divine care of the truth ; that the truth is kept pure 
by a higher superintendence ; that proceeding from one 
eternal Spirit it has an eternal unity, which is to be found 
in its integrity somewhere in the church, which is the 
body of Christ. Divine truth does not depend for its life 
on men, or ministers, or theological schools, or councils, 
or human forms of thinking, or philosophy, though these 
have their uses ; but it is sown by the Spirit of God in 
the believing, loving, suffering, and obedient minds who 
compose the true church ; and this has ever been so. 
This Christian consciousness guided and moulded by the 
Divine Spirit through all changes and modifications ; this 
essential righteousness, faith, and love of the gospel, — 
perhaps conserved in the humblest, certainly the humblest 
and truest, whether simple or noble, unlettered or cul- 
tured, — is identical with the apostolic faith once delivered 
to the saints. And this truth, this gospel of the kingdom, 
shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony. 

I was speaking of the witness of the church to the 
truth, and that Christ laid on the church the work of 
" holding forth the word of life," so that in the begin- 
ning, " all as soon as they received Christ went forth 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 315 

everywhere preaching the word." And this work of tes- 
timony was never more needed than at present, for never 
was the doctrine of pessimism more practically taught 
than now ; when disgust of godly living has set in, and 
it is openly proclaimed that "life is evil," and that hap- 
piness in any form has never been and never will be 
obtained, either by the individual man or by the world 
as a whole ; so that the preaching of a living God, who 
through the Son has awakened humanity by His touch 
and brought a new eternal hope into man's life, the 
preaching of the word of life is the thing required for 
the present day, while it is the only salvation to men, 
and this divine gift the church bears in its hand to the 
world. The church represents the great idea of hope to 
the race, and is a body organized for the more effective 
preaching of the truth that makes alive. Is the church 
doing this? Is every believer, every church-member, a 
preacher of eternal hope and life? 

Lastly, the church forms a family wherein the believer, 
at first weak as a little child in the faith, is nourished in 
the new life, kept safe from the deadly corruptions of the 
world, and trained to cheerful activity in God's sen-ice. 

Christian faith enters as an independent force into this 
earthly sphere of things, and it cannot claim to be an 
exclusive and absolute power ; it cannot, as yet, authori- 
tatively demand the entire control of all human affairs, 
society, and civilization. It comes as a modifying and 
renovating element into society, and must work its own 
way along with other forces until by its inherent truth 
and divine power it wins for itself a dominant place. 
Thus it has been said, Christ commanded his disciples 



31 6 Horcz Honiileticcz. 

to give tribute to Caesar, but Christianity has destroyed 
Caesarism. The New Testament, in like manner, urges 
a brotherly treatment of the slave, but Christianity 
has destroyed slavery itself. Every existent wrong has 
its destruction in the law of love. Yet in the mean 
time, in this undeveloped and struggling period of the 
Christian faith, the church presents in itself a social 
sphere, a family organization, which is intended for the 
genial and kindly nurture of the new life that comes 
from above. Here is a household of faith. Here is a 
brotherhood whose unifying principle is love, and whose 
unison is compared to that which exists among parts of 
one body, which are not similar bodies brought together, 
but one interdependent body, animated by a common 
principle of life, working from one centre. In the world 
there are as many centres as there are men ; in the church 
there is but one centre, the one divine man, the embodied 
humanity, — Christ. The New Testament test of a man's 
being a Christian is the love of the brethren, and he who 
breaks the love by false acts is a " murderer.'' The sin of 
the Pharisees was that they broke the law of love, the law 
of brotherhood. They were separatists, sectarians, schis- 
matics. In the religious conflicts of the past, in those 
spiritual wars since the beginning of the Christian era 
which have divided the nations and gone like a sword 
through human household's hearts, it has been heretofore 
thought essential to urge the spirit of separation from 
the corruptions of the church and of the world ; but the 
root-ideas of the gospel are peace through purification, 
the reconciliation of divided wills, the harmonizing power 
of love ; and the time will come when there shall be 



Relations of Preaching to the Church, 317 

union and not separation, and when those who love the 
Lord shall, in obedience to his express command, " love 
one another," and shall re-knit the bleeding parts of his 
broken body. Did the Lord mean that his great words, 
" That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, 
and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us," should 
not be realized, as some sect-makers say, on earth, 
but only in heaven? If everything good is relegated to 
heaven, what becomes of this world? This is a sorry 
prospect. The better view is that Christians of every 
name, being united in one family in Christ, their Head, 
shall also unite themselves together in good works of 
Christian activity, shall help and train each other in 
doing good and redeeming men from the power of evil ; 
and then, thus united, and then alone, shall the Church 
be stronger than the world. 

Now, to be baptized and to become a member of this 
church of Christ requires but the simplest act of faith, 
the truly childlike spirit that trusts Christ, the spirit of 
the Ethiopian ruler whom Philip received by baptism 
into the fellowship of the church on the reception of 
Christ into his heart. He had come up from the depths 
of Africa to enter at once into the Christian church, and 
yet he went on his way rejoicing, having done according 
to his light, having not been disobedient to the heavenly 
vision. Now, if the church, established by Christ for 
the confession of his faith, for the concentrating and 
diffusing of the Holy Spirit's influences, for the preaching 
of the truth and the training of men in holy love and 
service, was divinely planned to aid in the world's re- 
demption, how evidently this plan is made vain by the 



3 iS Horcz Homiletica. 

fact that such large numbers of souls are living, at best, 
but a feeble and precarious spiritual life outside of the 
church, in the chill atmosphere of the world. The 
brotherhood of the Christian church is not yet so strong 
as to be above all other bonds. The roll of church 
members is poor and scant. This is a condition of 
things to cause profound and painful thought. The 
church fails to lay its grasp on the passing generations. 
It fails to lay hold of and utilize some of the most power- 
ful intellects in the community. The loftiest and the 
lowest are not brought in, and only a fraction of the 
middle class. There are vast multitudes, not only of 
the unevangelized and heathenized, but of young persons 
who have been reared in enlightened and Christianly 
ways, and who, perhaps, are not themselves strangers to 
the Heavenly Father's love, who are not yet in the 
church and doing its work, but are drifting hopelessly 
farther and farther away from it. This is wrong and 
unscriptural : " For with the heart man believeth unto 
righteousness ; and with the mouth confession is made 
unto salvation. " How long, indeed, shall it be said of 
a great many among us whom we respect, that " they 
had every other gift but wanted love? " He who loves 
Christ will show that love by confession. The two go 
together by a law as sure as that which unites filial love 
and filial obedience. 

And have ministers no responsibility here? It is to 
ask this that I have dwelt so long upon the question of 
the church. The relation of the preacher to the church 
springs from the nature of the preacher's work, which is 
mainly spiritual, dealing with men's moral life and char- 



Relations of Preaching to the Church. 319 

acter. It is not in his own strength alone. He has 
something behind him. The church is the preacher's 
coign of vantage, his wise economy of effort, his divinely 
established help and instrument whereby to reach and 
mould the souls of men for God. He derives moral 
power from the church to send forth the messages of 
God into the world, and, in turn, he has a special duty 
to the church to keep it full-manned and strong. Min- 
isters are servants of the church, appointed for the 
church's care and growth. They are the door-keepers 
of the Lord's house, and bound to keep that door open 
and free. They are (to change the figure) the church's 
voice. They are to admonish, proclaim, call, invite, and 
urge all to come in. Their preaching should be win- 
ning, drawing, wide-reaching. The apostles so preached 
that " the Lord added to the church daily such as 
should be saved." But "adding to the church" seems 
to have become a subordinate thing ; not that ministers 
and preachers are less true and strenuous labourers now 
than before, but as labourers in the " Lord's vineyard " — 
the church — they have apparently less personal aim 
and solicitude than formerly. They are contented with 
the general moral influence of their preaching upon men, 
but do not (so it has impressed me, though I may be 
wrong) bend such determined efforts to bring men into 
the church, by whose fostering care they are to be 
trained in all spiritual virtue and holiness ; so that the 
church now threatens to assume the hierarchical concep- 
tion of it, as consisting of the clergy and a small body 
of ecclesiastics, male and female. Do not recent statis- 
tics bear out this? This is indeed, I grant, quite in 



320 Horce Homileticce. 

keeping with other tendencies of the day, which, good 
in themselves, are nevertheless influential in narrowing 
the activities of the church and placing it in a secondary 
rank, though without the design of doing so. I appre- 
ciate, for instance, the grand work that the Young Men's 
Christian Association has done in the land, making 
up the glaring deficiencies of the church ; but I do not 
yield for a moment the principle that the church should 
be strong and large-hearted enough to retain within itself 
every energy which is developed in its day, and to make 
use of for good ends all kinds of talent belonging to 
every age of life. But young men do not drop into the 
net ; they must be captured by the patient skill of wise 
fishers of men. Where, indeed, are the young men in 
the church? Where and upon what objects do they 
devote their energies? And if otherwise directed, what 
an immense loss to the church of Christ does this imply, 
since the great and bold things in the world are almost 
invariably done by young men. Our churches should 
be full, and, above all, of young men, who do not see 
impossibilities and are stimulated by difficulties. While 
gladly welcoming and lending a hand to true reforms 
from without, ministers should stir up within themselves 
a holy jealousy for the church, that all beneficent ac- 
tivities, all reformatory, social, and missionary move- 
ments of aggression upon evil in the world, should find 
their inspiration and place in the church. Preachers 
should present the church to the world as fitted for 
every good ambition, with its sweep so ample, its com- 
munion so free, its creed so liberal, its life so pure and 
holy, its power so divine, and its love so infinite that no 



The Reward of Faithful Preaching. 3 2 1 

soul need remain shrunken and famished outside of it, and 
the extent of the brotherhood of the church should be 
conterminous with the extent of the brotherhood of man. 

Is the reward promised in the text — " They that 
turn many to rigJiteousncss shall shine as the 
stars forever and ever" (Dan. xii. 3) — only for 
those who do actually accomplish the conversion 
of many persons, and not also for those who have 
intense ambition and are truly consecrated, but 
whose circumstances absolutely prevent any work 
except on a limited scale ? 

The question of my correspondent is one of modern 
Christian belief and experience applied to a very ancient 
word of prophecy ; but it is a legitimate question and 
true in its idea ; for the Book of Daniel sets forth the 
real conflict between the powers of the world and the 
kingdom of God. It is not essential, although a ques- 
tion of interest, whether the four kingdoms of Daniel's 
prophecy were the Babylonian, the Medo- Persian, the 
Greek and the Roman, or that the last of these was the 
kingdom of Antiochus Epiphanes, instead of the Roman ; 
but in this 12th chapter of the book, all scholars agree 
that, beyond the cycle of the world-kingdoms, there is 
a future cycle spoken of, which looks to the triumph of 
another and a spiritual kingdom of righteousness, — a 
Messianic kingdom, — that, while suffering persecution 
from the power of the world, as it did in the days of 
Antiochus Epiphanes, and also of the Roman Emperors, 
will finally emerge and shine. Then, also, the " wise," 
or thos*e who have taught the true knowledge of God, 

21 



322 Horcz Homileticce. 

and have " turned many to righteousness/' or have main- 
tained and confirmed the truth and led others to do 
the same, even if their own lives have been sacrificed, 
" shall shine as the stars forever and ever," or be as the 
clear welkin fixed in permanent brightness and glory. 
This language applies, certainly, in the main, to leaders 
who, like Daniel himself, have been loyal to God and the 
right in dark times of the world's religious history, but 
also in its scope to all those who, by their lives and 
words, have preached righteousness, and have thus aided 
many to be righteous ; and who can tell but that when 
all things shall be revealed, some who are now unknown, 
shrouded in their self-sacrifice and lost in their love to 
God and man, shall then shine as planets beside which 
the most illustrious names in the history of the church 
shall pale. But the highest motive to labour for the good 
and salvation of men, the highest motive of ministers 
and preachers of the gospel, is, not the hope of future 
reward, but the simple doing of the divine will, the love 
of God and of man. 



Which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God. — John i. 13. 

Text contains Bible doctrine of regeneration. God's plan of de- 
livering sinners from the malady of sin. Taught, first, negatively ; 
second, positively. First, what it is not ; second, what it is. 

I. Negatively. 

1. "Not of blood," — natural generation — plan of evolution 
— " survival of the fittest." According to this the Jews said, " We 
have Abraham to our father." Great privilege to be of good 
family, — to be born of pious parents. But regeneration not in 
this way. All born sinners. 



Criticism of a Sermon. 323 

2. u Nor of the will of the flesh." The body possesses power 
of shaking off disease, or of healing its own maladies — "the vis 
medicatrix naturae " — recuperative power of nature. May not 
the soul possess a like power ? Many think so. Idea embodied 
in proverb, " He is sowing his wild oats." But, alas, none ever 
gets well of sin. 

3 " Nor of the will of man M Either (a) of the man himself, or 
(b) of will of others, as parents, teachers, etc. No education or 
training or discipline will effect regeneration. 

Under these three heads is included every plan that men have 
ever trusted in or tried or that is conceivable. 

II. Positively. "But of God." 
Prove and enforce. 

This plan kindly submitted and having some good 
points ends where it should have begun. It spends 
itself on what is not the theme, or what, at best, is but 
a preparation for it. The potential word of the text is 
its last word. The way is cleared to this, but here is 
the substantial and infinite truth of the passage fitted to 
teach the mind in spiritual things. If the context, 
which surely cannot be lost sight of in explaining Script- 
ure, were regarded, the subject referred to by the 
pronoun " which " (" which were born") is what goes 
before, namely, " children of God." The apostle in the 
text describes who and what are the children of God. 
The description given of what they are not, — and I 
venture to suggest that this be made the introduction 
of the sermon, — sets forth but the one truth, though 
in a cumulative form, which begins in nature and ends 
in will, that the children of God are not of human origin 
by any accident of generation, as fruit of natural desire 
or result of human purpose. This, as suggested by the 
plan itself, touches on the strong point made by the 



324 Horcz Homileticcz. 

Jews, that they were Abraham's offspring. It may be 
also legitimately applied to whatever act, intellectual 
and moral, man can put forth to produce such beings. 
It may apply to religious zeal itself, whether on the part 
of other men or of one's own voluntary striving to make 
himself good and righteous. These human acts are 
important, and perhaps essential, but they are not the 
creative cause of the new ethical generation of the 
" children of God;" and then comes the real theme. 
Thus the plan might, perhaps, be given somewhat in 
this shape : — 

The " children of God" are not produced by any 
human means, whether natural or moral. This thought 
is to be set forth in clear relief, briefly but forcibly, so 
as to awaken desire to know what is the true nature of 
that new life so impressively spoken of in the introduc- 
tion of the Gospel of St. John. 

I. Nature of God's children. 

1. It is unknown and mysterious. It is like the 
wind of whose origin no man is cognizant, nor does its 
source lie within the limits of human will whose opera- 
tions are explicable ; but though unknown it is still 
definite and according to a divine law of being. 

2. It is inner and spiritual. Its law of life is not drawn 
from anything without or as a development of the natural 
man, but proceeds from what is within and hidden. 

3. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. 

II. Signs and characteristics of God's children. 

1. All comprehended in love. The traits of the 
new creature implied in his being " born of God," and 
as given by the same apostle in many places, and- by the 



Criticism of a Sermon. 325 

apostle Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, are 
embraced in one word, — love. As love is the essential 
nature of God, so it is of His children. This is the 
infallible criterion. The divine spirit of love, which is 
the spirit of Christ the Son, is more easily recognized 
in a man than described ; but its absence from a pro- 
fessed child of God is fatal to his sonship. The deepest 
principle of the new birth is in the affections and divine 
quality of the heart. Love is the root of true righteous- 
ness. When a radical change of character is wrought, 
love is the effective principle. 

2. Joy in things of God. The spiritual life is of 
the nature of choice in which the law itself is surpassed, 
and a man acts holily because he delights to do so. 
He is not impelled so much by the outward command 
as by the inner inclination, so that the yoke is lifted and 
the heart acts freely and with joyful willingness. 

3, Progress toward perfection. If thus divine, the 
life of God within the soul must be constantly making 
advance till, if not here, yet hereafter, it becomes perfect 
as God Himself is perfect. 

Let them learn first to show piety at home. — I. Tim. v. 4. 

Introduction — The influence of home. We are. in very large 
measure, what our home-life makes us. Homes nominally reli- 
gious, without proper influence, because lacking elements in the 
true home-life. 

I. In my model Christian home, the religion of Christ is lived 
every day; not simply professed, but lived. The spirit of Christ 
rules in all the home-life. 

II. My model Christian home makes much of the Bible. There 
the Bible holds the central place, and gets a daily reading clear 
round the family circle. 



326 Horcz Hotnileticcz. 

III. My model Christian home has a family altar. No Chris- 
tian home can be complete until the family altar is set up. The 
heathen has his shrine; shall the Christian have less? The in 
fluence of that sacred gathering for prayer lingers with us through 
all the years of life. 

IV. In my model Christian home religion is often made the 
theme of conversation. " They that feared the Lord spake often 
one to another " No better place for this than in the home. 
Personal religion is never kept in the background in my model 
Christian home. 

In my model Christian home there is a very high regard for 
the house of God. The whole family-circle is in the church- 
circle ; all revering God's day and God's house. 

This is my model Christian home ; the home filled with the 
inspiration of heaven, and most like unto the home in the Father's 
house. 

If this text be employed for a sermon upon the 
Christian Home, or Home Piety, as it rightly may be, 
the exact use of the original passage should at least 
be stated. It is interesting in itself. Speaking of the 
duties of those of different ages in the church, the 
apostle says that widows who have children or grand- 
children should depend for support upon their own 
families, and that children should learn, before they 
make professions of godliness in other matters, to show 
its fruits at home and among their own relatives in the 
honour and support they render to those who are older ; 
that they should make return to their parents for all 
their kindness and care. The love and respect of 
children to parents is, indeed, the type of genuine 
piety, — of the honour and love of God. A sermon 
might seasonably be preached from this text on the 
duties of children to parents, — of those deep eternal 
obligations that devolve upon children from the Chris- 



Relativity of Truth. 327 

tian motive of love, such as God bestows upon us in 
His Son. 

In the plan presented. I should, in the introduction, 
add to what is well said, the statement in regard to the 
original bearings of the text, as has been suggested. 

What is the law of truth in its relativity to the 
human mind, which the preacher should under- 
stand in order to preach successfully for the conver- 
sion and spiritual upbuilding of men ? 
The answer to this question would, indeed, conduct 
us into a style of homiletics unlike the commonly under- 
stood science of sermonizing, but it would go to the root 
of the matter, and comprehend the object of preaching, 
which is to lead men to know and love God unto 
eternal life, which is Pauline homiletics ; and is it not, 
above all, the homiletics of Christ, our example as a 
preacher? He cared for the substance rather than the 
mode of preaching : for the actual bringing of selfish and 
sinful men back to the holy will of the Father. This is 
seen in one of his pregnant utterances, made while he 
preached daily to the people. These special words of 
Christ, whose truth as a teacher, in opposition to false 
teachers, was proved by his own test, namely, that he 
sought not his own glory, but the glory of Him that 
sent him, were : "If any man will do His unit, he shall 
know of the doctrine whether it be of God:' The " doc- 
trine " evidently refers to truth which is not merely in- 
tellectual or superficial, like the knowledge of natural 
things, but spiritual, and has relations to the apprehen- 
sions and affections of the soul, — to those relations of 



328 Horce Homileticce. 

the human spirit to the doctrine wherein God is known 
in His true being as Father and Redeemer. " If any 
man 2t'/7/ do His will," if his heart's desire springs toward 
doing the will of God, if, from the impulse of a wil- 
ling, loving, obedient heart, he turns to the doing of 
God's will, he shall be led to the saving knowledge of 
God. This is, in fact, similar to the words of the apos- 
tle John in his first epistle, " He that loveth is born of 
God and knoweth God ; " and it does not essentially 
differ in meaning from those other words of our Lord, 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God ; " 
which mean that the state of the heart purely seeking 
holy things shall so put to rest evil passions that the 
blessed vision of God shall rise upon the soul. 

We might then affirm that our true knowledge of God 
— the end of teaching — depends upon the state of the 
heart, the sincere and obedient condition of the heart 
toward God. It does not consist so much, I take it, in 
the doing of God's will outwardly or perfectly (though 
this is an inevitable result of the right state of the heart), 
as in the willingness to do it, in the disposition. This 
is very important in practical religion. It is a well-known 
principle that like comprehends like. Truth cannot be 
comprehended without a preparation of the mind that 
brings it into unity with the truth, since " the faculty of 
knowing does not act in isolation, but man's capacity for 
knowledge is conditioned upon his inclination." As we 
do not graft a tree until the season when the old stock 
is ready to receive into its pores by numberless ascending 
currents the new life principle, so we do not, if we 
understand human nature, attempt to impart truth or 



Relativity of Truth. 329 

true counsel to another, let him be our best friend or 
child, at the first opportunity which offers, whatever may 
be the state of the mind, whether excited by enjoyment 
or raging with anger ; but we wait for a moment when 
the feelings are tranquil, when the heart is disturbed by 
no absorbing emotion, and is pliant, affectionate, and 
confiding : then every word sinks and is lodged in 
the mind. Thus truth cannot be looked upon by itself, 
or taken out of its relations to the object on which it 
acts : it is always more or less affected by the object 
on which it acts, — an important consideration for the 
preacher. 

A great many mistakes and unsuccessful efforts in 
religious teaching, which come under the rhetorical 
principle of adaptation, might have been avoided, had 
this fact been duly appreciated. Truth, however long 
and faithfully preached, does not convert men in spite 
of the state of their hearts, any more (as our Lord used 
the sacredly familiar figure) than seed sown on a rock or 
on the sandy path produces fruit. " The word preached 
did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them 
that heard it." Here is the joint operation of two fac- 
tors, — the Word, and the soul on which it acts ; and, in 
this case, the unprofitable hearers, as in the parable of 
the sower, " had no root in themselves," and therefore 
the very seed of God's truth withered. In the acquisi- 
tion of scientific truth there is something analogous. A 
student obtains outside views of natural truth by receiv- 
ing it second-hand from text-books, or on authority ; but 
he alone truly knows a truth who is taught by it, who 
waits on its teachings, who enters into its spirit, who 



330 .Horcz Homileticcz. 

submits himself to its requirements and to the ruling will 
it embodies, — who, in a word, investigates patiently and 
lovingly for himself the laws of Nature. 

What scientific man is there who has come into any 
interior and original knowledge of natural truth who has 
not done this by a faithful obedience to Nature, not seek- 
ing his own truth, his own theory, or glory, or will, but 
Nature's will, — by watching, as Agassiz did for many 
winter months on the desolate Aar-glacier, for her slight- 
est indications, and walking carefully in the narrow way 
she dictates, — since there is " a strait and narrow 
way" into the kingdom of science as into the kingdom 
of heaven, and he only who carefully follows that way 
may enter the kingdom. Great artists, too, lend them- 
selves with most devoted patience to all Nature's appoint- 
ments. " Nature is commanded by obeying her, " Lord 
Bacon said ; and another great Englishman wrote, 
" Humility is the hall-mark of wisdom." In the search 
for divine truth, above all, this principle cannot be lost 
sight of, for it is not seeking one's own glory, or doing 
one's own will, or following one's moral or religious the- 
ories, but it is by a practical submission to truth which 
expresses or embodies the will of God, that one comes 
to know its power, sweetness, and soul-renewing nature. 

How often is it the case with the Christian's heart, 
sincerely striving to know more of God, that it learns 
more in an hour, or half-hour, by an act of love, of 
obedience, of doing good, of self-denial hard though it 
be, than in years of thought and study, noble auxiliary 
as thought is to truth ; that to the mind humbly waiting 
upon God and serving Him, the difficulties which beset 



Relativity of Truth. 331 

Christian doctrine will gradually disappear, or continue 
to be no longer a means of discouragement, because the 
mind has learned to wait God's time and method of 
making it clear. Without setting all down to mystery, 
there are difficulties in the higher truth, as there must be 
when the inconceivable nature of God is the subject of 
truth, just as there remain mountain peaks not yet scaled. 
Whether these are unscalable or not, it is true of the 
summits of the Divine nature that they are not attained 
by the human mind ; they are inaccessible ; and if they 
are ever distantly approached, it is by this law of rela- 
tivity, and by the Spirit-uplifting influence within that 
portion of the soul which has capacities of love and faith, 
which can apprehend divine things, and to which the 
Father communicates Himself in love. 

Take the first and simplest of truths, the being of God ; 
students of theistic evidences know that God's existence 
cannot be proved by the pure reason ; nor can the related 
truth of the immortality of the soul. The argument is 
strong, but not perfect. But since there is the conscious- 
ness of dependence ; since there is need of the divine in 
the human soul ; since man, philosophically, is incom- 
plete without God ; since the soul cannot be bounded or 
satisfied by rationalistic proof; since it can and must 
exercise loving faith in what meets its wants in the 
Word and Spirit of God, — especially in the revelation 
of a Redeemer, — then, although Christian faith is an 
intelligent act, the most rational act of the soul, ventur- 
ing nobly upon its best conclusions and the greatest 
probability or weight of moral evidence ; yet to know 
these truths requires something more than an act of intel- 



3$2 Horcz Hornileticcz. 

ligence ; it is an act of the soul in sympathy with the 
higher impulses and attractions of the love of God. It 
looks for light to the actual revelation which Christ makes 
to it of the Father, and of all that cluster of spiritual 
truths about the truth of God's being. Here, then, if 
we wish to grow in grace and the knowledge of God, we 
must come by faith and penitent obedience constantly to 
drink, — so that it maybe in us a well of water springing 
up unto everlasting life. This thought might be followed 
out in a more practical manner as regards the preacher's 
spiritual work. 

I have treated of the law of relativity in regard to the 
knowledge of divine truth as being dependent upon the 
state of the heart in its willingness to do the will of God, 
and going beyond the bounds of rationalistic proof, and 
this is of the utmost importance for the preacher to un- 
derstand. Now, we might, by parity of reasoning, affirm 
that he who, on the contrary, scornfully or carelessly re- 
verses the process, and strives to comprehend before he 
obeys, to know the truth before he does the will, can 
never come to the knowledge of divine things ; for he 
who is seeking God, never having said, " Lord, teach 
me," is cutting and wounding himself with the mysteries 
of God, not having obeyed those plain requirements of 
His will which he can by his moral instinct comprehend. 
Religious truth being thus full of the instant, intimate, 
and vital claims of God upon us, being full of the heart 
and spirit of God, being addressed not only to the intel- 
lectual, but above all and supremely to the moral nature, 
and being affiliated with our personal responsibility, — 
our deepest spiritual being and affection, our own hearty 



Relativity of Truth. 333 

obedience of the truth becomes the only way to know it, 
— the way to that real knowledge of truth which vivi- 
fies and saves the soul. The preacher should bring 
home the question to his hearers : " Are you willing to 
begin the service of God? " This question settled leads 
to all other things in knowledge and faith. It is to be 
reasonably presumed that in ordinary congregations there 
are some persons who, if not converted men, are not with- 
out thought upon their religious responsibility, and who, at 
some time in their lives, have made an effort, perhaps a 
strong effort, to obtain the true knowledge of God and that 
peace which flows from the assurance of His love. The 
lonely room has hid these struggles. The silent heart has 
been tossed with them as with waves of the sea. The hour 
of affliction and heavy disappointment has emphasized 
them with terrible power. In the necessities of the 
mind that penetrates the reason of things, " thoughts 
that wander through eternity " have been aroused. What 
is life? What is the end of this restless existence? 
The cry of the uselessness of all, the " eternal mis- 
ery of life," will not answer these questions. As the 
consciousness of wrongdoing, of sin, has mingled with 
such reflections like a cloud that rolls menacingly over 
the clear sky of contemplation, shutting out the light, 
the mind has lost itself in thinking, in interminable ques- 
tions, and has come back from such search unsatisfied, 
despairing of light, without peace or even hope, and get- 
ting no nearer to God and the rest of His love. Thought, 
every good preacher and pastor knows, is among the 
first signs of an awakened condition of the mind at last 
drawn to give an attention to spiritual realities, and 



334 Horcz Hontileticcz. 

which it would be sheer fanaticism to overlook, as if we 
could leave out the intellectual nature in this universal 
awakening of being, such as a true, religious conversion 
is ; yet it is not, after all, by the way of the intellect 
that one comes into the peace of a child who finds rest 
on the bosom of its Heavenly Father. It is only by the 
way of love and obedience ; for in matters that pertain 
to the spiritual kingdom the heart goes before the head, 
and love outstrips the swift reason. In God's dealings 
with human minds this truth has been illustrated. The 
patriarch Job recognized the same law when he humbled 
himself before Him who searches the reins and heart. 
David, by awful humiliations and chastisements, was 
brought to sing : " Show me thy ways, O Lord ; teach me 
thy paths. Lead me in the truth and teach me : the 
meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He 
teach his way." The disciple who, by loving, had learned 
to know the divinity of Christ and truth as it is in Jesus, 
wrote : " Every one that loveth is born of God and 
knoweth God." The Lord said in the Sermon on the 
Mount, in which the kingdom of God in its majestic 
breadth and beauty is unrolled before us : " Blessed are 
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
And he said in another place : " Except ye be converted 
and become as little children ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." 

A German author, poetically but no less truly, writes 
of this process of moral life through that humility which 
fits the mind for the reception of divine truth : " It is a 
fruit which is found in the field of spiritual poverty, — a 
flower that grows from the ashes of self-love ; " for, when 



Relativity of Truth. 335 



a man acknowledges his want, comes to the death of 
self, and at the same time feels and acknowledges the all- 
gracious, all-completing, all-satisfying love of God, then 
his heart is teachable, is softened to receive the seed of 
eternal life. How else could he receive it? How else 
could rich and poor, high and low, receive the gospel? 
In what other way could there be hope for all sorts of 
men in every state of life and intelligence, for those 
who have no intellectual training, to be brought to the 
saving knowledge of the truth? Could they come by the 
way of reasoning? This, after all, partakes of the pride 
of the intellect, Yet even the most rude, simple, and 
sinful man, under true spiritual influences, may evolve this 
willingness of which the Saviour spoke in words of di- 
vinely practical moment and help when he said : ; * li any 
man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine 
whether it be of God." Here the OeXetv means true de- 
sire. Our King James' Version does not give us its pre- 
cise meaning ; and the new Revised Version even would 
be apt to lead us into error, because its rendering of the 
passage — w if any man willeth to do his will " — might 
give the impression that 6e\ca> implies a deliberate act 
of will, or choice, whereas it is willingness more than will. 
It is disposition rather than volition. Actions which 
result from the will are altogether in a man's own power. 
They are acts of conscious volition, and have their origin 
within ourselves. Will is to be distinguished from will- 
ing disposition, or desire, for desire may originate from 
objects out of ourselves and over which we have often no 
controul. Now, if 0eA.cu/ here be not a dry act of will 
springing from the reason or intellectual nature merely. 



336 Horcz Homileticce. 

and consciously taken as a deliberate act of choice, but 
is a true desire only to do God's will, springing from the 
affections or whatever other source, a sincere yearning of 
the heart to God, the smoking flax, the inward acknowl- 
edged desire of the spirit toward a higher obedience and 
life, however small, and in one however sinful, wrought, 
we hardly know how, by the Spirit of God and the imper- 
ceptible spiritual influences of truth upon the heart, 
which every man, the wickedest man, experiences at 
times, because he is a man and is a child-spirit de- 
pendent upon God the Father of spirits, and is a being 
capable of loving, obeying, and knowing God, — how 
possible, how easy for him to be saved ! He has but to 
follow out this thread of light kindled in him, this gra- 
cious yearning, coming from whence it may, this penitent 
wish, this softening desire after better things, this con- 
fiding impulse and real willingness of the heart toward 
God, — to follow it humbly, boldly, persistently, impli- 
citly, like a little child, still trusting in God to guide and 
lead to perfect light and peace. So was it with the 
disciple Peter, the untaught fisherman of Galilee, who 
leaped into the sea to go to his Master, forgetting dif- 
ficulties, undismayed by impossibilities, looking only to 
his beloved Lord. And he did not sink, although his 
faith was fearfully tried and he began to sink. The 
preacher of Christ's gospel has a right to say to his 
hearers that any man may be saved who is willing to be 
saved ; and that every one knows this by his own heart- 
experiences, by being willing to follow out the higher 
divine leading, rather than the lower, sensual desire. 
Then let him be told who is honestly seeking the truth 



Relativity of Truth. 337 

for his eternal salvation, who is only willing to be saved, 
that he may and should go fearlessly to the soul's Lord, 
obeying his simple word to come to Him, even though 
he must cast himself into a raging sea of long- terrifying 
difficulties in order to reach Him. " We know that God 
heareth not sinners ; but if any man be a worshipper of 
God and doeth his will, him he heareth." The docile, 
obedient, broken, and trusting heart, Christ will fill with 
the new light of his truth and life. 

It has seemed to me in regard to some men in especial, 
that " they had every other gift, but wanted love ; " that 
there was nothing lacking to such a man in religious 
things but that creative touch of God which makes all 
things new. His condition is like a landscape at night. 
The hills, the sea, the forests, the plain, the well-built 
towns and the fertile fields, stretching away half seen 
or hidden in the o,bscure light, are all, indeed, there ; 
but all is dim, confused, dark ; it requires a touch of 
the morning's beam to reveal its noble features in their 
true beauty, fulness, and life. Truth is not absent, 
knowledge is not wanting ; but it is the heart that is 
wrapt in darkness, unbelief, and death. It is the silent, 
apathetic, impenitent, unloving heart. Xo slightest im- 
pulse of loving desire even ! The Spirit of God re- 
sponding to the least yearning of the heart after His 
higher teachings, will at once bring light and gladness 
to the whole internal scenery of the mind. The mind 
will awake beneath the transforming beam of Chi: 
love, and where was darkness there will be light, where 
was only the natural there will be the spiritual, where v. 
death, eternal life. To such persons the preacher of 

22 



338 Horcz Homileticcz. 

Christ cannot, practically, do better than to say with all 
the earnestness he possesses : O good men, but blind ; O 
wise but ignorant seekers after the higher truth, begin to 
listen to the doctrine of God with the ear of the heart as 
well as the ear of the mind, or the mere outward ear ! 
Come like the publican to the door of the temple, falling 
on your face and confessing your sins ! Humbly submit 
to the truth that it may teach you ! Do it, that it may 
bring you to life and make you wise unto salvation ! 
Obey the things you truly know and can do ! Forsake 
all and every known sin ! Yield up a proud, untamed 
indifference to divine things, and love if you never loved ! 
Give yourselves up to the Divine will, and cast yourselves 
unreservedly on the love of God, and He will send His 
renewing and enlightening Spirit, and conduct your minds 
out from under the cloud of fear and doubt, into the 
serene realm of a perfect faith in Christ, through whom 
we have access unto God, and the everlasting life which is 
in Him. 



THE END. 



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